My first foray into East Harlem (Part 2) – 13.10.2018

As I trudged upwards through the dimly lit stairway, a plethora of different paintings adorned the walls.

I stepped in and it took a few moments to sink in at the scale of the entire place. Every inch of the walls were covered in paintings, drawings, posters, adornments of every type one could imagine.

The picture above does not come close to doing justice of how many more odd objects were spread across the area, I may embed some 360 degree videos of the space in future.

Another OHNY representative ushered me in while I was gawking at the space and checked my registration details. No surprise that no one else was there yet as I was early by around half an hour, hoping to get an unobstructed view of the area.

I asked for the direction to the restroom, which was discreetly behind a narrow passageway. To my delight, it was decorated in a similar fashion as the rest of the space.

The tail end of the two videos above were actually restricted areas where the locker rooms were. Initially, I did not know they were out of bounds until someone else came along and was told not to enter. Oops!

Soon, a few more people came along and one of the Department of Sanitation workers gave us a brief overview of how the Museum of Trash came to be. Starting from the 1980s, DSNY worker Nelson Molina started collecting objects he had found during his work of collecting trash on the streets of New York. The second floor of this space was meant to be for storing vehicles but it turned out that the structural support was not strong enough to withstand their weight. Thereafter, the Museum of Trash was born as it became the perfect place to store whatever objects Molina collected on his daily routes.

Molina also took special care in curating the space, and frequently came in to organise his collection to give a curated experience for visitors. The space felt cluttered with stacks of objects strewn around the room and yet, there was a certain order to how everything was displayed. Molina’s collection seems to exemplify the concept of organised chaos well.
We were then given free rein to roam around the space, which was about half the size of a football field. One neon sign quickly caught my eye.

There were a few other catchy posters that I took photos of on the far end of the space.

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Some other short clips of the space below:

I’ll feature the rest of the photos of the Museum of Trash in the next post and talk more about the East Harlem neighbourhood (and its infamous reputation which deters many New Yorkers from visiting).