It's not much different from our citywide obsession with recycling, really. Just as the cans, bottles, and newspapers are stacked and sorted into their blue bins each week, revealing our intimate drinking and reading choices before being melted or pulped into postwaste virginity, so the secrets of strangers' closets and living rooms are revealed along the street every weekend, personae unloaded for 10 cents on the dollar.
Most urban sales are ragtag affairs, born out of a burning desire for cash and a clean sweep.
For would-be buyers, serendipity and small bills are the name of the game. You never know what you might find. Then there are the fashion fences, where clothing that probably didn't come from the closet of the seller is being unloaded. Old leather jackets from the '70s, glossy and cracking along the seams, crocheted yarn ponchos, a couple of ruffled taffeta dresses in magenta or turquoise - where these wildly unrelated pieces came from is never clear. You could buy someone's shoes off their feet if you wanted to, that's how down and out everybody seemed.