The Golden Age of Free Stuff Is Upon Us

On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it was chandeliers, a Tiffany bracelet and a vintage velvet chair with silver-colored rams’ heads. In Jackson Heights in Queens, it was a Korean wedding chest, and in Park Slope in Brooklyn, a giant stiletto chair with a purple zebra pattern.

All of these, remarkably, were free.

They were just a few of the items that have been found discarded on the stoops or streets of New York City over the past year, a byproduct of the pandemic that has amounted to such an abundance of valuable trash that some are calling it “The Golden Age of Free Stuff.”

The bonanza of freebies has prompted New Yorkers to prowl the city every day, combing through trash as if they were panning for gold, even at the risk of carrying bedbugs home.

“Look at this!” exclaimed Sonia Izak, after spotting a chair with a missing leg as she walked around her block on the Upper East Side on a recent frigid evening. She lifted the bottom to look for a label.

“Look, literally, it’s a West Elm! This looks very clean,” she said. “It’s in perfect condition except for the leg. They could probably order this from the company.”

Looking through other people’s trash and dragging away used objects isn’t new. But what has come to be known as “stooping,” or more recently, “trash stalking,” has become so widespread since the start of the pandemic that several Instagram accounts devoted to it have attracted thousands of followers and transformed what used to be a niche activity into a phenomenon.