Suburban Ruins and The Ethics of House Flipping
People turn to the past because they are looking for something that they don’t find in the present — comfort and well-being… Only the wealthy or the very poor can live in the past; only the former do so by choice.
- Witold Rybczynski, Home
Although her home has been on the market for several years now, my aunt (by marriage) isn’t stalling because buyers are asking too low. She’s hesitating due to emotional attachment to the property — it’s the house her father designed and built, and the home she grew up in. I lived there briefly myself when I was going to college nearby. Recently, she was to close on a deal with a young married couple, but then she looked up the wife on the internet and discovered the woman is well known as an area “house flipper.”
This neighborhood eschews miles and miles of Washington, DC suburban sprawl with its vestiges of pedestrian life: it is a 10 minute walk to the West Falls Church metro, and 5 minutes to a main street with a coffee shop, dry cleaner, TJ Maxx, a good balance of chains and small businesses. A bike trail is nearby.
Because of its conveniences and location, the land is pricey. Buyers willing to pay for West Falls Church real estate generally want several bedrooms and five baths. Over the years, my aunt has complained about the trasformation of modest homes — 70s-style “post-and-beam extravaganzas” as this article in Residential Architect puts it — into regurgitated palatial fantasies. Soon hers will be the only non McMansion on the block.
And gross remodeling may be its inevitable second life. For now, she’s still waiting for someone who will respect the design of the place. This isn’t some kind of a penance — the house is really beautiful. There are few places I’ve felt quite as cozy in, as I have reading a book on the back porch looking out at the garden. The use of the space, the way the windows are shaped, so much of my idea of a perfect house comes from living there that year in 2003.
A few years ago, I was guiltily obsessed with A&E and TLC house flipping programs and marveled at how often the flipper blatantly conned people out of their property. The worst of them was Armando Montelongo, a San Antonio flipper who is half as likeable as Roger Clemens, just a little less weird than that plastic surgeon on Dr 90210, an internet scam artist, and known for habitually neglecting to pay his contractors.
“Mondo” does a lot of objectionable things on the show, from piggish to illegal. He once had his wife and sister-in-law dress in beekeeper costumes to exterminate a colony of bees, so he could save $300 on a professional beekeeper. He watched them from a lawnchair, beer in hand. Then there’s something about him hiring children of illegal aliens for a demolition project. Now he’s dealing with several lawsuits — facing jailtime — not paying one contractor, owing backtaxes, and the 20 or so properties of his that went into foreclosure. The guy is a crook and A&E should have known better.
But I most despised him when he’d make false promises to whomever he’s buying the house from: that he’d never strip the Victorian wallpaper. That he likes the bar in the kitchen their father made. That he’ll keep the structure the same way, but just clean it up a little bit. A widow or widower passes, and the descendants can’t afford to keep up the house. All they want is to know someone is enjoying the home as grandpa made it. Money isn’t a main issue at a time like that. So he pretend to agrees, taking the bargain, and soon after breaks his word — neglecting the family’s wishes on TV! It’s not just knucklehead-ed behavior, it’s usually aesthetically disappointing: ironing out everything that made the home unique in order to appeal to the most buyers. A hardwood floor and granite countertop sacrificial rape of a property.
Now, my politics are more freemarket than most: I don’t believe in rent control for the reason of economic scarcity, but sale of a home has so much more at stake than most financial transactions. A price that is agreed to with the understanding the buyer will preserve without excessively altering the property, can be a binding agreement. But does this ever happen? I’m right now trying to find examples of this in real estate cases. I guess this is more of a post I’m writing as I’m thinking about it, rather than a clear statement of any kind. And any books readers might recommend on the subject are much appreciated.
Like with the Neutra Kaufmann House house that just sold in Christie’s auction. Is it only a tacit understanding that the buyer isn’t going to tear down a wing to build a gnome garden?
Here’s an example of preservation gone to an unpleasant extreme:
Richard Lucas has been trying to win permission to cut through his elderly, infirm parents’ front porch so they can get from their living quarters onto the street without climbing stairs. And for more than a year, the D.C. historic preservation authorities have found reasons to say no to a ramp.
After all, as the city’s architectural historian put it, “repeating porches of similar height and depth create a notable pattern and rhythm” along the Lucas family’s Mount Pleasant street, and the District wouldn’t want to let that rhythm be broken just to accommodate a couple of old folks who have lived in their house for 47 years.
Houses in communities respond to the changes in houses all around them, which is why I fear my aunt’s beautiful house will eventually go all Stepford. Even if they did find buyers to fall in love with it, there is the risk that given time they might give in to the status-conscious vibe of the neighborhood and build additions.
One of the best articles, one of the most linked-to essays this year, The Next Slum? by Christopher B Leinberger for The Atlantic, so immediately struck at the hearts of most of us, the unfortunate truth that the wealthy really are taking over our cities. Sure crime is down, but you try to live in Brooklyn on an artist’s salary.
One vacant home, means the depreciation of an entire neighborhood. And down like dominos the foreclosure crisis, which may likely “stay with us well into the next decade,” as Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com says in Bloomberg, puts pressure on all the neighboring homes until they too eventually tip.
It’s easier to erect a new house than it is to change an entire landscape. Recently, I learned there’s a “ghost cloverleaf” in Canton, MA, just several miles from me. Eventually I’ll check it out and post about it, until then, here’s this write up on Xconomy:
[It] was constructed between 1962 and 1968, and is the northern half of what was originally intended to be a fully working interchange between I-95, aka the Southwest Expressway, and I-93, aka Route 128, aka the Yankee Division Highway.
From here, the state’s highway blueprints called for the Southwest Expressway to continue about 10 miles north into Boston. It would have barreled through farmland and residential neighborhoods in Milton and joined up with the American Legion Highway, which would have been converted into an expressway running along the eastern edge of Franklin Park. From there, the expressway would have turned Blue Hill Avenue into a six-lane gash through Roxbury and Dorchester, eventually connecting with I-695 near the present-day intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Southampton Street (which happens to be about four blocks from where I live in the South End).
Never heard of I-695? That’s because it was never built, either. Also called the Inner Belt, it was part of a scheme laid out in 1948 to help interstate drivers and truckers avoid the congestion in downtown Boston by circling through outer Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville. Perhaps it was a good idea at one time. But had this 7-mile loop been constructed, the Boston cityscape would be immeasurably different today.
“We do not pine for period cuisine,” Rybczynski wrote, paraphrasing Adolf Loos’ point that nostalgia is absent in most other aspects of our everyday lives. And most houses, just out of practicality due to changes in energy usage, really should be remodeled. But there are reasons we might value those floors that no matter how many times you sweep, will never seem clean. Reviewing Flipping Out, the only remaining house flipping TV show on the air today, Heather Havrilesky cleverly compares two of her neighborhood cafes. One where “tables are the wrong height for the chairs, the chairs are uncomfortable, the walls are covered in bad art, the bad stereo system blares the worst of Journey and Lionel Richie, the breakfast sandwich features over-buttered bread and that fake-smoke-flavor ham, the room is too hot or freezing cold, the teenage cashiers are friendly but inattentive, and a herd of middle-of-the-room flies circles endlessly in the sparsely populated dining area,” another a, “more corporate place nearby where everything is right. The tables and chairs are made of smooth wood and are perfectly placed, the menu is tastefully designed, the lighting makes everyone look like models at a photo shoot, classical music soothes patrons from a safe distance, cool breezes blow in the open French doors, and the small cup of gazpacho they serve has little slices of melon and a dab of pesto in it. Delightful! But it’s always crowded with people who have expensive haircuts and alarmingly nice shoes.”
As repellent and deeply wrong as the local cafe is, the overpriced, meticulously designed corporate eatery seems certain to transform you, slowly but surely, into the kind of person who pays too much for haircuts and shoes, the kind of person who experiences gazpacho that doesn’t have a little dab of pesto in it the way the rest of us experience a herd of middle-of-the-room flies. And therein lies the paradox of American upward mobility: The higher you climb, the thinner the air gets, until you can barely breathe.
Nostalgic or not, my aunt’s house as a standing protest against the McMansion-ization of suburban DC, and a call for the better days. If anyone is looking for such a property, please get in touch.
Images by William Eggleston.
Previously:
Collection or Clutter: Do You Toss or Save Grampa’s Old Paintings?
Rules for an American Fantasy Road Trip
A Hundred Chances: White Lies Post Facebook
The World’s Strangest Housing Communities
Related links:
- Home by Witold Rybczynski
- Do Hard-to-get Mortgages mean Better Cities? Treehugger
- The Broken Angel on Wikipedia
- Flip This Lawsuit
- Flipping Houses Ethics: Any Place for a Weasel?
- They Needed to Talk Some More, Smithsonian Magazine explaining William Eggleston’s most famous image
- The Stepford Wives of Worcester Park, Adrian Short
Urban Safaris: Graffiti Sites Considered for Heritage Protection
Simon at Ballardian says Melbourne is not quite as lovely as the Treehugger article I linked to suggests:
[The] Treehugger article only explores Melbourne’s inner city. The suburbs are a different matter. Perhaps the overseas versions might weed out the worrying strain of Mad Max style behaviour that sees cyclists as game to be hunted.
But then again, such behaviour inspired Mad Max itself, one of the finest films ever made.
Well, it may not be a “pedestrian paradise,” but Melbourne is in the middle of a debate that could lead to some curious developments in urban landscapes around the world. Australia’s National Trust and Heritage Victoria is considering graffiti for heritage protection (via.)
Scott Hilditch, chief executive of Graffiti Hurts Australia, says that protecting graffiti would effectively condone acts of vandalism and cost the Australian government over $260 million (U.S. $250 million) a year to clean up.
Some artists oppose the idea as well, protesting that it is contrary to the spirit of the art form itself. Melbourne curator and artist Andrew Mac says it would interfere with the natural process of street art: “The work is ephemeral. It’s not meant to last. It lasts purely as long as the weather and other graffiti artists allow it to last.” Mac also feels that the councils backing protection may have real estate motives in mind, such as promoting graffiti sites to fuel tourism.
The Banksy House
A London suburban Victorian terrace house tagged by Banksy famously went for bid at four hundred thousand dollars, “a buyer would receive the mural—with the house thrown in ‘for free.’” The house was later destroyed by “vandals” — nevertheless — maybe therein lies the answer to our national housing crisis.
We could send Swoon and Elbow-Toe to the poorest neighborhoods in Cleveland, Washington Dc, Detroit, and elsewhere. Why stop at the cities? We could tag barns in North Dakota too. 
I’d pay a lot to live in a Swoon-tagged house. And I’d certainly move in a neighborhood I’d never otherwise consider in order to do so. But bidding would be fierce. We could see these properties turning into hipster summer homes, for when the trust fund PBR drinkers want to rough it in the “Common People” sense.
Anyone can see street art, not just the people willing to step in a gallery. And that adds value. The more eyes on a work of art, (usually) the more valuable it becomes (although diminishing marginal returns plays here too.) This is why artists will often reduce the price of their work to display it in a museum rather than sell it to someone for his personal collection.
If art economics is difficult to understand, the economics of street art is unprecedented in its confusion. In England, Banksy is as famous as Damon Alburn and earl grey tea. His prints sell for millions. But this month, one of his pieces was whitewashed in Northern London.
Art critics know that street art and graffiti refer to very different things. As Hrag Vartanian put it, “What appears to differentiate street art from its graffiti predecessor are two things: the self-consciousness in its conversation with the city and its lack of the aggression and violence.” But city workers can’t be bothered to appreciate the difference, and maybe there is aesthetic merit to be gleaned from its aggressive older cousin.
I think the Australian preservationists are on to something, and one day we all will be thinking bigger. Maybe downtown Detroit will be heralded as an architecture splendor — an UNESCO site, the modern day Cesky Krumlov. Tourists in fannypacks and shorts will motorbus out to see it, and marvel at the public artwork as they would walking through Florence, Italy.
Already tourists enjoy the spectacle of poverty. When I was in South Africa a few years ago, i was shocked at the opportunities to visit the shantytowns (”Townships”) by bus tours. Brazil is notorious for its “Favela tours.” Here’s a good post on poverty tourism by Vagabondish, explaining how to minimize the exploitation of the people who live in these areas:
I think that if it’s managed by real, interested professionals, and sensible ground rules are set – don’t take photographs, don’t give money or candy away (donate through a suitable charity or organization instead), stay in small groups, and so on – then perhaps poverty tourism really does provide some benefits for the locals. And at this stage in its development, when it’s mostly undertaken by fairly seasoned travelers who are genuinely interested in understanding more about a country and its people, it seems that such tours can truly be managed in this way. My fear is that poverty tourism could become a more mainstream activity, and money-hungry travel agents will start sending in large air-conditioned buses full of ignorant tourists snapping hundreds of pictures, and then the rot will really set in.
Still, I can’t feel comfortable with the idea of the New Orleans disaster tours. Something about busing out to see a someone’s personal possessions strewn about, reduced to trash and chaos, bothers me more than seeing human faces of a tragedy.
Art by Elbow-Toe
Related links:
- The Very Public Life of Street Art by Hrag Vartanian in the Brooklyn Rail
- My Love for You interviews Elbow Toe
- Shadow Cities by Robert Neuwirth
- Graffiti artist Mike Baca (standing trial for seven years for graffiti vandalism and trespassing, which is twice the usual sentence in NY) Juxtapoz
New Scientist interviews Jan Chipchase, whose travels around the globe as a design researcher for Nokia have lead to many stunning insights as to how foreign countries use mobile technology. “The common denominator between cultures, regardless of age, gender or context is: keys, money and, if you own one, a mobile phone,” he says, “[It] boils down to survival. Keys provide access to warmth and shelter, money is a very versatile tool that can buy food, transport and so on. A mobile phone, people soon realise, is a great tool for recovering from emergency situations, especially if the first two fail.” He gives an fascinating example of Ugandians using their prepaid mobile cards as a money transfer system, “They would buy prepaid credit in the city, ring up a phone kiosk operator in a village, read out the number associated with that credit so that the kiosk operator could top up their own phone, then ask that the credit be passed on to someone in the village - say, their sister - in cash.”
Saying Yes and Hearing No
Steven Pinker, extolling the virtues of human language, observes that information is the sole commodity that a person can give away and keep at the same time. I would add that sexual pleasure is also something that a person can confer on another and personally enjoy simultaneously. The linkage between sex and language can further be divined by noting that the English language tacitly acknowledges that sex was the primary force behind the evolution of speech. I doubt that it is mere coincidence that the word ‘intercourse’ has two common meanings, only one of which refers to speech.
- Daniel Dennett
The best advice I’ve heard in a long time, comes from a trashy women’s magazine I picked up at the gym the other day: “aim to hear the word ‘no’ at least three times a day.” Like most good advice, I’ve yet to fully integrate it into my life (I’m at the “maybe” and “we’ll see” one or twice a week stage.)
For their fall collection, Viktor & Rolf sent their models down the runway wearing the word “No” written in makeup on their faces or sewn into their clothes. Models without a cause. But the fashion designers called it female empowerment. And it is, I guess. People generally dislike saying “no,” more than they dislike hearing it — it means you’ve been challenged. Saying it can burn a bridge. Hearing it can be a great motivator.
But the economic principle of diminishing marginal returns (one scoop of ice cream is nice, two is better, three is alright, and four scoops is worse than none at all) definitely applies to this advice: hearing “no” more than three times a day would be demoralizing to the most blissed-out zen yoga instructor.
Is there anything worse than disputing a balance with a call center representative? They’ll tell you “no” three times in a single sentence. This week’s New Yorker goes behind the scenes of Avoke, a voice software company that measures the exact moment a caller breaks from “cold anger” (”in which words may be overarticulated but spoken softly”) or “hot anger” (”in which voices are louder and pitched higher”) to full-on WTF?!???!?!?
The article mostly explains the difficulty in programing a computer we can talk to both by hearing and speaking language. One major speed bump: we have a lot of words that mean the same thing, just with subtle nuances. Take the word yes:
Even a simple concept like “yes” might be expressed in dozens of different ways –including “yes,” “ya,” “yup,” “yeah,” “yeahuh,” “yeppers,” “yessirree,” “aye, aye,” “mmmhmm,” “uh-huh,” “sure,” “totally,” “certainly,” “indeed,” “affirmative,” “fine,” “definitely,” “you bet,” “you betcha,” “no problemo,” “and “okeydoke” — and what’s the rule in that? At Nuance, whose headquarters are outside Boston, speech engineers try to anticipate all the different ways people might say yes, but they still get surprised. For example, designers found that Southerners had more trouble using the system than Northerners did, because when instructed to answer “yes” or “no” Southerners regularly added “ma’am” or “sir,” depending on the I.V.R.’s gender, and the computer wasn’t programmed to recognize that.
One of my friend Iris’s favorite words is “yes.” She notes, “around the world, ‘yes’ or its equivalent frequently tops surveys as the most beautiful word in a given language; for you, too, is it the only word that you really want to hear?”
But how often do we hear it? Most positive responses are yep, ok, sure, will do, etc etc. What else could a film called “Yes” be about other than bodice ripping? The scarcity of “yes” in daily discussions must have something to do with its frequency as bedroom utterance.
When John Lennon first met Yoko Ono, he walked up a ladder to read a single tiny word with the aid of a magnifying glass: “Yes.” Then there is Molly’s soliloquy in Ulysses closing the book famously with the words “..yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
Interestingly, the Irish language has neither “yes” nor “no” (A fact that surely didn’t escape James Joyce when he wrote that.) Per a Wikipedia article that’s since edited, but is archived on Answers.com: “In it to indicate a positive or negate response to a question, the verb of the question is repeated in either the positive or negative form. For example (verb underlined)”
“An bhfaca tú an timpiste?” (”Did you see the accident?”)
“Chonaic.” (”Saw.”)or
“Ní fhaca.” (”Did not see.”)
The terms Sea (”is so”) and Ní hea (”is not so”) mean “yes” and “no”, but can only be used in response to the question An ea? (”is it so?”).
Previously:
- Alright, Sokay: Tomorrow’s English Language
- Open Source Art: Will There Ever Be Another Lily Chou-Chou?
Good magazine posts this easy to read infograph of international currencies. Glad I saved those Euros when I was abroad last spring. Note the troubled South African rand.
Wired’s feature on Marc van Roosmalen, facing prison time for biopiracy, is one of the most fascinating articles I’ve read in a while (unfortunately, it’s overshadowed by the controversial cover story.) When I first heard about biopiracy, I believed it might be one of the few areas where intellectual property is actually fair, so long as it’s granted to the country of origin. But reading how it is enforced in the Brazil gave me second thoughts. Richard Stallman (of course) has some things to say about the need to free all plant life from patents.
Our Past is Haiti’s Present: An Interview with “Secondhand (Pepe)” filmmakers Hanna Rose Shell and Vanessa Bertozzi
Pepe in Haiti. Images used with permission.
In the 1960s, as part of an international aid program, the US started shipping huge loads of secondhand goods to Haiti. Many older Haitians still refer to their secondhand clothes as “wearing kennedy,” a nod to the president at the time. Another word commonly used to describe these goods is “pepe.” Preachers were said to cry Paix! Paix! (”Peace! Peace!”) to calm down the excited crowds awaiting new loads of items to sort through.
Today, anyone in the Miami, NYC, and Boston areas — cities with large Haitian immigrant populations — is likely to run into someone at a flea market or thrift store collecting goods to take home to Port-au-Prince. Secondhand (Pepe) (clip) is a short documentary showing this remarkable trade in goods, as it explains the history of secondhand clothing in our country. Filmmakers Hanna Rose Shell, a Ph.D. in the History of Science at Harvard, and Vanessa Bertozzi, a graduate of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, who now works at Etsy, were curious about the tradition of secondhand clothing. From 2003 - 2007 they visited ragyards in Miami, went through archives in London and Washington DC, and traveled to Haiti to see the pepe markets for themselves.
Shell says Haitians sometimes dress better than Americans because they are used to tailoring their secondhand clothes to fit. While the pepe market makes it difficult for Haitian tailors to sell their own designs or traditional fashions; the cheap cost means, as one woman in the documentary explains, they can “adopt the look that is on television without much effort.” Shell describes the country in an essay in Transition as completely absent of traditional retail, “interiors lie vacant, transformed into makeshift dwellings or pepe depots. Chain stores and standard clothing outlets dot only the poshest streets of Petionville. Whereas McDonalds, Walmart, and American banks have invaded other Caribbean and Latin American countries, Haiti operates at the level of the individual seller and transaction.”
The US has a long complicated history imposing trade embargoes on Haiti, but we never ceased shipping secondhand goods. With the benefit of cheap items, comes the cost of serving as a dumping ground. Shell describes the city of Miragoane, which receives shipments of pepe nearly every day, as “blanketed, literally, by a downy coat of secondhand clothing. It grows out of the ground and into the street, onto every surface, a sartorial network — buildings, barrows, man and machine-made structures, everywhere. Each unsold piece is full of memory and possibility, the ghosts of its previous wearers and the portents of its future ones sharing the same textile skin.”
Secondhand (Pepe) is also a creative film with innovative collage-like usage of archival images and footage. (Shell and Bertozzzi also have Flickr sites with more images.) You can purchase a copy of the documentary on Etsy. Over email I asked the filmmakers about their experience making the documentary.
How did you first find out about the secondhand (”pepe”) clothing market?
We became interested in the stories of secondhand clothing when we were college students together in the late 1990s. We went to thrift stores and began to talk about where the clothes came from – and think about the different stories they would have, depending on who bought them – and where they traveled. In 2002, an article in the New York Times Magazine, discussed the international trade in secondhand clothing and after reading it, we decided to make a film on the subject.
We were living in Boston at the time and started going to secondhand stores where we met many immigrants involved in collecting secondhand clothing for shipment to their home countries. We were particularly struck by the stories of many of the Haitian immigrants we met during our first days of interviewing and shooting, and went to the pier in East Boston where clothes were shipped to Saint Marc. We set out to follow the story of the clothing they purchased – pepe –as it made its way overseas. From there, we got increasingly interested in the history of the secondhand clothing business, and the way it has been shaped by, and shaped, the diasporic experiences of a diversity of immigrant communities in North America.
Who delivers the goods to Haiti? Is it only coming from the US?
There are all sorts of ways and means for pepe to arrive in Haiti. Sometimes individuals in Boston, Miami or New York fill containers, or old cars, with clothes and put them onto boats destined for the port cities of Port-au-Prince, Miragoane or Saint Marc. Other times, people fill up bags with old clothes that they transport on the airplane when they return home to visit friends or families. Small scale pepe business people, might buy a whole bale at a warehouse in Florida and have it shipped over, where it would be received at the port by a business associate. Our sense is that most of it is coming from the United States these days – though some from Canada and France as well.
What does pepe mean?
That’s a good question. The complexity of what pepe means is what motivated us to make the film. It can mean all sorts of things and can at different times have the sense of a noun, a metaphor, an adjective, and an identity. Some of the connotations include: old clothes; free cloth; foreign goods that have already been used.
What sort of things can you get?
Everything.
A woman in the documentary mentioned some Haitians have spiritual apprehension toward wearing someone’s old clothes. Did you meet anyone who felt this way?
Yes we did – old clothes might well carry the spirits of their previous owners and people have many ideas about how to clean, or purify clothes –lemon juice, vinegar, dry cleaning and so on.
Have most Haitians learned to sew or is there a market for tailors?
We saw and spoke with many tailors advertising their services, though perhaps not as many as in years past. The tailors that we spoke with had a difficult time selling their original designs and traditional Haitian clothing. They were working altering pepe.
What other kind of jobs has the secondhand market created?
Sorting, storing, transport, as well as multiple stages of sale, re-sale and re-re-sale. However all this has to be seen in relation to the jobs that have been lost.
Did they really use clothes as currency at one point?
In a sense. . . but we wouldn’t say “as currency” - more like “in the place of currency.” When the paper or coin currency of a nation is unstable and in short supply, it is not uncommon for a good (and often a relatively plentiful good) to take the place of currency - via a kind of generalized barter.
Film screening at Garment District in Cambridge, Ma.
Are there controls in place to keep people from sending over real junk, such as inoperable gadgets or stained items? Do they recycle unwanted things?
As far as we could tell, there was a lot of “junk” being sent over. Even pepe cars marked “no brakes” on their windshields. However, appliances or cars might be used for their parts. Stained clothing might be used as rags or upholstery stuffing. Haitians are very resourceful in ad-hoc engineering and repurposing. That said, we did see an incredible amount of trash and pollution. It was hard to tell whether this was due to the lack of sanitation services or the flood of discarded pepe.
What does the pepe market look like?
First off, we should note that you can find pepe for sale on pretty much any street in Haiti. It seemed as though pepe lined the sidewalks with small-time vendors selling a few things by hanging them up on the walls by the sidewalk. Then we also visited all types of dedicated marketplaces. Some were very concentrated with just clothing, and these were often by the ports, where the clothing would arrive. Sometimes the pepe would be sold within larger markets where you could also find food and other goods. Sometimes the clothing was sorted into different areas or by peddler’s specialty — you would have the used shoe guy over here and the lady that only sold t-shirts over there.
In one of the largest markets in Miragoane, just outside of the gates of the port, in the central town square — you had people opening up boxes and making preliminary sortings. In the Saline marketplace in Port-au-Prince, there was an incredible expanse of peddler/tailors set up with sewing machines, sitting among mounds of clothing, under tents sewn together from fabric scraps and old blankets. It gave us a very visceral sense of the flow of goods and the ways in which they were being altered.
“Chinese manufacturers are setting up shop in the U.S. due to a weak dollar, energy shortages, tax credits, and a desire to compete globally. ” - Metafilter
“Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share” A study appearing this week in Science finds that most people choose the latter, and that the brain responds in unique ways to inefficiency and inequity. The study used fMRI to scan the brains of people making a series of tough decisions about how to allocate donations to children in a Ugandan orphanage.” - EurekAlert
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