These Are The People In Your Neighborhood

EVEN THOUGH I'VE lived in the same apartment for the past 15 years, I've met very few of my neighbors. Through mutual friends, I met a couple early on who lived across the way, but they moved out about 10 years ago. I got to know another family living four doors down, but they, too, moved away. About a year ago, Morgan and I met a couple at the bar who'd moved into that same apartment four doors down.

That's it, really, unless you count the one guy who wanted to kill me (but that's a long story).

All of that changed, to a certain degree, when Morgan and I decided to whip up a stoop sale. It was the first time either one of us had ever done such a thing, and it was a bit intimidating. Most people drag out broken toasters and toys, tired shoes, embarrassing clothes and Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Ours would be extremely focused: We were only selling movies.

Over the past few years, the pile of DVDs and tapes on the floor had grown waist-deep and consumed a quarter of the apartment. Finding a specific film within that potentially deadly pile was all but impossible. Finally one day in July, Morgan convinced me it was time to get some damned shelves, so we did. But placing everything on shelves revealed several remaining stacks of unwanted or duplicate tapes and discs. Rather than trying to sell them to Kim's or on eBay, we filled several crates, made a couple signs, waited for the weather to be less than unbearable. We hoisted everything down to the sidewalk, climbed halfway back up the steps, sat down and waited.

There were plenty of other stoop sales around, but how many were selling God Told Me To? Yup, this was class merchandise-Hitchcock, Kubrick, Scorsese, Coen Brothers, Coppola. There were foreign films, even a musical or two. There were slasher films and science-fiction films, Larry Cohen pictures, all the George Romero that mattered, tawdry Italian thrillers and I Spit on Your Grave. We had a little bit of something for everyone, except probably children or people with any sort of strict religious convictions.

The first guy appeared after about 10 minutes, browsed a bit, then bought an old copy of The Night Stalker.

"That's a very good sign," Morgan said as I pocketed the cash. If the weirdies sold, it meant that other crap would too.

Then we waited some more. Read the Post. Watched the dogs go by. Watched bicyclists scream at motorists. Watched a bunch of people walk by, glance, pause and keep walking. The people pushing strollers seemed to walk away more quickly.

"Maybe I should put I Spit on Your Grave someplace else," I suggested. Where it was, it was the first thing people saw. Neither of us made a move.

Slowly, people paused. Then they bought something. Then they started coming over from the Laundromat.

A middle-aged woman who bought The King of Comedy chatted with us for a bit about Jerry Lewis. Another picked up some Larry Cohen movies, then asked if I had any giallos-a colorful breed of Italian mystery/thriller popular in the 70s. I did, and she bought those too. Half an hour later, her husband, whom she'd called from the Laundromat, came trotting over. He was a hardcore cinephile, and we talked about nasty pre-code Walter Huston pictures like Kongo and Beast of the City. Then he bought a few more things.

It was all very strange. These people were being nice. Nobody tried to steal anything and nobody insulted us. They all lived in the neighborhood, and I recognized none of them.

A young man stopped with his girlfriend and took a glance into one of the crates.

"How much are the DVDs?" he asked, and I told him.

"Uh-oh," his girlfriend said, as his hands grabbed at the side of his head for a moment and he dropped to his knees. Then he began snatching things. He ended up buying movies that had all been released by the same distribution company.

(It was funny to see how people tended to be thematic in their movie purchasing. A fresh-faced young woman, for instance, bought all my zombie pictures.)

After two and a half hours, we'd made a satisfying $100, and moved everything back upstairs. But looking at the crates, we realized we'd barely made a dent in the stock, so the next morning, we carted it back down to the sidewalk, and waited some more. Morgan ran and bought a Post. Later she went and got some nuts.

The guy from across the street came back and picked up some more titles, and I lent him a Lon Chaney picture.

Things were kind of slow about 1, so Morgan filled a couple happy cups with beer and we had a few of those.

Quietly and unexpectedly, despite the slow stretches, things were adding up.

"How can you stand to part with those?" an older woman asked regarding the Ernie Kovacs set I had for sale.

"I have another one upstairs."

A small, insane foreign man stopped and chatted for a long time, examining and commenting on each film in turn, asking me to convince him that they weren't bootlegs (at least I think that's what he was asking). Then he acted out a few scenes from Scarface and Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Then he went away.

"Do you have any Simpsons?" didn't seem a strange question at all coming from the bearded, chubby guy in the t-shirt.

"No? But I do have The Critic-the series Al Jean and Mike Reiss made after The Simpsons."

"No thanks," he said, and moved on. I knew he would. Nobody liked that show.

Tom, our friend from four doors down, asked if he could drop a box of records off, just to see what might happen. We told him sure, and he returned a few minutes later with a monstrous box filled with Phil Collins, Billy Joel, Village People and Sesame Street records. Morgan and I were mortified by this, until one guy stopped, got excited and grabbed a bunch.

"You know someone's seriously into Sesame Street," he told us, holding up an album, "when they have records by individual muppets. This one's by Oscar the Grouch!" He pointed at the name. Then he bought some.

Other people just stopped and chatted for a while, without showing any interest in buying anything, though someone did eventually buy I Spit on Your Grave.

Come four o'clock, a few beers in us, the prospect of hauling the remainders back upstairs wasn't too exciting. It had been a hell of a good time, strangely enough, just sitting on the stoop, talking to people and to each other, even making a little money. But we were drunk, we were sunburned, and all that stoop-sitting had worn a hole in the seat of my pants. It was time to shut down.

That's when a young Asian fellow stopped, took a quick glance through the remaining crates, and made a flat offer for everything that was left. We accepted, and he and his friends carried it away. It was very odd, very abrupt and very easy. He got a remarkably good deal, a lot more space on my floor, and together Morgan and I had made a couple hundred bucks. More important, we'd actually met a few of the neighbors. Imagine that.

We grabbed that big old box of records and trudged back to Tom's place. He'd only sold those Sesame Street albums. He opened the door, took the box, then asked us in for a beer. o