Street sweepers

Neighborhood: Fort Greene/Clinton Hill

Myriah Scruggs and Nadia Yaron fell into their business out of necessity when they moved to New York with no furniture—and no money to buy any. They started combing the neighborhood for pieces they could salvage, which led to the founding of Nightwood (nightwoodny.com), a home decor business specializing in refurbishing discarded furniture. While Yaron’s focus is on textiles—reupholstering chairs with vintage fabrics, bedding and hand-hooked rugs—Scruggs deconstructs large, wooden items and reconstructs them as tables, headboards and cabinets. Again, we raced the trash men to see what we could find.

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Photographs: Jeff Gurwin

Score No. 1: Vanderbilt Avenue at DeKalb Avenue
A block into the mission, we find two tall pieces of wood leaning against a tree— a perfect find, Scruggs claims. ῠJust wash it, take the screws out, cut it and make it into table legs,” she says. And, with that, the wood was strapped onto her handy dandy handcart.

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Score No. 2: Vanderbilt Avenue at Willoughby Avenue
ῠSchools are good to stake out because they’re always throwing out stuff,” says Scruggs, explaining why we’re standing behind St. Joseph’s College. She spots a small cabinet and explains the key to finding reusable wood: steer clear of the fake, laminated stuff and look for pieces that feel clean, not flaky. The inside doors are unfinished and natural-looking, and Scruggs calls them ῠperfect for any table top.”

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Score No. 3: Vanderbilt Avenue between DeKalb and Lafayette Avenues
With our overloaded handcart, we move on and stumble upon a massive cluster of discarded desks that gets Scruggs and Yaron squealing. ῠReplace the top with a new one and it would be a beautiful new workspace,” Scruggs exclaims. There’s a small chance we could find more goods, but our cart looks like it’s going to crap out any moment, so we call it a night.

Next: Pickup tips >>

Time Out New York / Issue 677 : Sep 19–25, 2008

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Comments

1. Posted by Tina on Tue, Sep 23, 08, at 10:44am

   What about the bedbug problem? I used to love picking through furniture on the street, but have been wary with the bedbug explosion. Advice?

   Flag as inappropriate

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