On Wednesday afternoon, I went & did something I have been meaning to do for a long time: I went to an auction at the storage center in my neighborhood.  It is an enormous space, 7 floors full of lockers where New Yorkers, who are typically low on closet space, can stash away their valuables or things they haven’t used in years.  (Snowboarding gear, anyone?)

Here’s how it works.  After a certain period of time, if you haven’t paid your rent on the storage locker, the rooms are opened up to the public & auctioned off.  You are not permitted to pick & choose various items: you actually bid on ENTIRE rooms full of stuff.  You’re also not allowed to rummage through the room — it has to be taken at face value.  The auctioneer’s assistant stands at the open door with his arm barricading the entrance to prevent overzealous bidders from fossicking around.  You bid according to what you estimate the value of the contents might be.  Given that most of the lockers are full of sealed suitcases & boxes, it really is about the luck of the draw.  You could end up with a box of precious antiques… or a stash of “pre-loved” girly magazines.  It’s a fun outing if you have the right kind of constitution.

The most amazing thing was the cast of characters it attracted.  They all seemed to know one another.  I imagined them as a herd of auction obsessives, moving from location to location & bidding on unknown treasures.  The most interesting of them all was the tall, lanky man whose mouth twitched involuntarily.  He had stashed a cigarette behind his ear & was trailed by his wife, a slightly confused-looking woman in a pink metallic puffer jacket. There were about ten of us in attendance, moving in a pack.  We followed the auctioneer around the warehouse.  He didn’t suffer fools gladly.  He was wearing a hearing aid & whizzed ahead of us in his motorized wheelchair.

Inside Someone's Locker

What did I see within the lockers of people’s once precious possessions?  Karate trophies.  Enormous suitcases.  Old headboards.  Stacks of pornography.  Canned spinach.  A knife collection.  The locker which contained the pornography & spinach had also been “decorated” with pictures of various porn stars as well as Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen stuck to the wall.

The man with the twitchy mouth snapped up all but two of the rooms.  I had to wonder what it all meant.  When the auctions were over, he ambled outside to smoke the emergency cigarette that had been wedged between his ear & his hair-line.  He puffed angrily.  Was he mad because he had bought too much?  Too little?  It was beyond my ken.  What did he do with it once it was over?  Would I see him in a Hoarders special later in the year?  Did he pawn it all on eBay?  Did he rent a stall in a flea market?

You would think that this experience put me off locker auctions entirely.  In fact, the opposite is true.  It simply whetted my appetite.  It made me more curious.  I will definitely be back next month.  Maybe the twitchy man & I will become friends.

Words and pictures by Gala Darling