2006, Detroit
This kid I knew, Iggy, told me about a flea market where his father had a stand on weekends. Just past Donut Villa and the split in the road where Vernor forks to the left and Dix to the right, there is what looks like a shipping container graveyard or farm (depending on your sense of optimism) there is a continually shifting mountain range of orange, red and yellow metal containers and behind that, a crisscross of train lines, rutted roads and service drives.
It didn’t look like a market or much of anything, a chain link fence held tight with a bicycle chain and padlock, and inside a small assortment of provisional structures fashioned out of blue plastic tarps, electrical conduit squatting here and there. You have to come back on the weekend, when it is a little warmer Iggy said. His dad is called Nacho, short for something else, and works one of the Taco trucks along Springwells.
One weekend early May it is warmer. There, at the same lot that was once padlocked, the chain link fence gates are open, and the stalls with the blue tarps are there, along with tables and tables under easy up tents. Rows running perpendicular to the street make a sort of winding zipper of people checking out the offerings.
The empty lot with the container farm is packed with people walking, chatting, smoking, haggling in front of or behind tables with piles of cell phone chargers, large rugs with images of tigers, Jesus or Ganesh, shrink wrapped stuffed animals, big lots! (that’s what the sign reads) tube socks
Also: Michael Jackson’s Thriller album (cover only; Czech release)
(for the full text, Collected Lots appears in the October 2015 issue of infinite mile )