Customer Reviews

Mongo: Adventures in Trash

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By the time Ted Botha notes "the civilian dread of the collector who might be a lunatic," about three quarters of the way through MONGO, the reader is no longer a civilian. The reader is helping to open a black garbage bag, waiting to see what is inside. Botha is writing about the people who cause passers-by to quicken their pace or cut a wide berth, those who mine trash if not for survival than for a reason to live. Botha set out to find out what makes them tick, and in doing so has opened up a very surprising world filled with fascinating, intelligent characters who blow away assumptions.

For the most part, Botha's world is New York City. He slips quietly and wide-eyed into each foray into an aspect of collecting but soon peels away aspects of the experience to reveal startling secrets. The author's tour guides live a little differently and are willing to put up with dirt, sludge, sewage and rotting garbage, not to mention the disdain of doormen and other "civilians." There are people who feed a whole commune from garbage cans, who furnish huge spaces, even build with found materials. There are hunters who excavate landfill and come up with relics from the Revolutionary War and the 19th century. There are the preservationists who have saved segments of the city's former grandeur when parking lots and glass buildings have gone up in their place. There are first editions of world classics, jewels and works of art.

Botha writes assuredly, making for a quick-paced but thoughtful book reminiscent of John McPhee's work. He does not impose value judgments or undue insights. Rather, he goes along for the ride and does a fine job of introducing a very wide-ranging social, psychological, economic culture that makes sense. In the end, it is the "respectable" middle and upper classes who have thrown away perfectly good things, in some cases deliberately poisoning them or creating laws to discourage pickers, who leave us scratching our heads.

Many people collect things, from books to stamps to shoes; it's usually a harmless diversion, perhaps even a social or educational outlet. Collecting garbage, that's something street people do. But that's not nearly the whole story. In _Mongo: Adventures in Trash_ (Bloomsbury), Ted Botha has reported on New York street collectors. "Mongo" is slang that originated in New York in the 1980s for "any discarded object that is retrieved." This decidedly does not mean mere garbage, the worthless rotting ephemera which no one wants. There are plenty of discarded things, however, from books to wood scraps to blocks of buildings, which the person who did the discarding thought were worth zero and which the eventual collector thought had value. And many times, that value is in the thousands. Frequently this is a surprising story of rags literally going to riches. Botha reminds us, "The street collector you see today could well be a bum or a lunatic, that's true enough, but just as easily a millionaire, a schoolteacher, an accountant, a doctor, a housewife." He has contacted all these levels to report on them.

This is a New York story, for a good reason. All mongo collectors of all levels "... agree on one thing: New York can't be beat." The reason is simple: "Great wealth makes great garbage." There is great wealth, true, but also people live very close together, meaning that collectors have to range minimally, and there is frequent turnover of renters. Remarkably, mongo collectors all are breaking the law. In New York City, garbage placed for pickup is no longer anyone's property but the city's. Even official sanitation workers are forbidden to take anything for themselves. Botha never once heard of anyone picked up for picking up garbage, so the regulations about it seem to be universally ignored.

The lowest of the low are the black bag people, those who hunt inside black plastic garbage bags. They have to look through genuine garbage, of course, but can find watches, rings, and even wallets, which they can sell on the street. Somewhat above the black baggers are those who are eating garbage. The best garbage to eat is thrown out by restaurants, and the best time to hunt for such stuff is at closing time. "Sometimes they put the food at the top of the bag so it is easier to find," explains once such collector. Some are dedicated anarchists, loosely organized to share found food so that eating this way is a political option and a rebellion against consumerism. Higher in the hierarchy are the canners, those who survive on what they can make by selling recyclable cans. Mongo is sometimes about making a living, and sometimes about making a life. A Chelsea woman found a computer in the trash several years ago, and from that taught herself to repair found computers, which she now resells. There is a former bank employee here who specializes in books and printed ephemera. He has found a first edition of _Finnegans Wake_ as well as signatures of Benjamin Disraeli and Aaron Burr. There are a couple who dig down in the grounds that used to house outhouses; they can get bottles worth thousands of dollars. Another excavates sludge for what has gone down modern sewers. There are artists who make an entire domestic statement with a folk-art installation of _objets trouvés_. There is the conservator who picks up valuable exotic wood for reinstallation into other houses. There are many collectors here with a passion for what they do, and very few outright loonies. With wide-eyed curiosity, and an agreeable friendliness he shared with his subjects as he does with his readers, Botha has dug up a strange and valuable portion of the national economy.

I truly enjoyed Ted Botha's story of the characters he encountered in search of Mongo,As any dumpster diver knows there are treasures to be found in dumpsters everywhere. Ted Botha does an excellent job of giving us insight into the world of the amazing and gifted people involved in dumpster diving in the streets of New York. The only thing I would have liked to have seen in this book is pictures of some of the incredible things rescued others considered trash. The individual & group efforts that were undertaken on the streets to perserve the wonderful history & culture of New York are incredible. Thank you Ted for showing the world that Dumpster Divers can be intelligent,resourceful,caring, creative & artistic human beings.

Look it up in a dictionary and you'll find lots of different meanings for "mongo", but in this title it refers to anything salvaged, usually from trash. It is a fun trip around New York City meeting and salvaging with a large variety of people with different interests and styles. We all have probably seen "canners", those who collect and recycle cans for money, but this goes way beyond that! One of my favorites, of course, is the man who walks around town with his wagon, filling it up with free books he finds discarded. Then he goes home and rests, naps, relaxes, and is back at it in the afternoon, selling everything he found that morning. His policy is to keep very little, if any, of what he finds. There is the standard story about freegans as well as anarchists and artists who make art from trash. Another man watches remodeling sites for discards, and walks off with the pantry door from Jackie Kennedy's apartment, while another manages to snag an old confessional from the Vatican, which he has shipped to NYC and installed as an elevator in a home. It would be great to follow up reading this with Not Buying It - a story of a year of not buying anything. Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping

one of the most interesting books I've read in a while. I find myself recommending it to many, particularly those interested in 1) unusual people and 2)environmental issues.
Chapter by chapter, the author describes a street-person who, during nights before trash pickup, collects items which others have thrown away and makes a profit from them. There is the individual who, through his collections, has become an expert on first edition books; the woman who takes computers off the sidewalk and rebuilds them, learning so much that computer companies consult her when they're stumped; the man who has made a business collecting beer and soda cans from the ball parks.
Need I say more?

If you enjoy garage sales, rummage sales, stop when you see a pile of objects left by the curb, this is the book for you. Fascinating if sometimes disturbing or downright awful ways of acquiring all kinds of objects of value or necessity practiced by gleaners in New York City. Expect to be amazed or possibly disgusted by the creativity and variety of the collectors. The author appears to have done a credible job of research to produce an informative
book. A fun read.

"Mongo" is a slang term--new to me--that refers to an object that has been reclaimed from the trash. According to The Cassell Dictionary of Slang, quoted at the beginning of Ted Botha's book, it's a term specific to New York, which is fitting because Botha's exploration of mongo is likewise based in New York. In each of his ten chapters Botha discusses different types of trash reclamation by profiling some of the "collectors" he's met. He writes about freegans and "canners" and artists who work with found objects, about "black baggers," about people who trade in discarded books. (I had no idea so many people were throwing away books.) He profiles a pair of friends who dig up old privies in search of antiques. He writes about men who sift through old landfill when it's dug up during construction. Unless you've thought about the subject matter before, you'll probably be very surprised by the variety of mongo that exists.

Botha's book is uneven. It includes a few too many passages in which the author rattles off long lists of items reclaimed from the trash. And it ends with an unfortunately dull chapter about a man who collects large chunks of demolished buildings. But the book is also fascinating in parts, particularly when Botha discusses the sociology of trash picking. He writes about the lifestyle of people who specialize in can collection, for example, and about the hierarchy among trash pickers. (Who knew there was a hierarchy? Who knew there was specialization?) But I would have liked more detail, both because the subject is interesting and because I was left with some questions. Botha writes, for example, that "black baggers" are on the lowest rung of the dumpster diving hierarchy. Apparently, opening up a black bag is an act of desperation, presumably because one can't be sure ahead of time what will be in it. But it's not as if most trash bags are transparent. Why are black bags singled out for demonization?

Botha's book isn't perfect, but it's worth the read. He's hit on one of those wonderful topics that's right at your feet but which only the blessedly curious think to explore. Kind of like mongo itself.

-- Debra Hamel

This book contains lots (and lots) of details, some of them interesting, but the narrative is so poorly tied together, and so packed with inane and pointless analysis, "Mongo" is mostly discardable. Why do people collect things? This question is posed every other paragraph, apparently to fill space. At one point, a psychologist and psychiatrist are enlisted to answer it, whereupon ye olde theme of addiction is recycled: people collect things because of the temporary "gratifying physical sensation" it gives them. "It's like a fetish, or sexual arousal," clarifies the psychiatrist. Equally clueless theories are introduced elsewhere: a fear of death, a desire to snoop, a desire to preserve the past, and/or a need to feel immortal. Never entertained is the possibility that people collect things because they find them interesting.

And the book, while ostensibly about items found in the trash (or on the street, or under the ground), is very much about collecting in general. In fact, many of the items discussed are antiques or collectibles, not ketchup-soaked hot dog wrappers or used, ant-covered yogurt containers, or even soda cans worth a nickel ("Adventures in items retrieved from the trash" does lack the proper ring, though). And so the entire, cliched range of collecting is covered--from the first few pages, we know it's only a matter of time before the crazy-lady-with-400-cats motif shows up, for example. When it does, it's almost a relief. In fact, we get two cliches in one bag: the crazy-lady-with-cats theme combined with the house-piled-high-with-garbage motif. Something else we've never heard before: some street people are mentally ill. (No! Can that possibly be true?) As proof for this radical and controversial thesis, an interview with a psychotic bag lady is included. Her assertions and theories are carefully considered and, ultimately, discarded as too down-to-earth for a volume such as this.

Journalist Ted Botha introduces readers to a different type of collector: a person who finds his treasures in what is typically considered trash, and gets them for free. 'Mongo' is street slang for anything discarded by one person and picked up by another - and it can be found anywhere. Botha picked up sidewalk furniture when he first moved to New York and bumped into many others doing the same - hence the evolution of Mongo : Adventures In Trash, surveying the world of the 'mongo collector' and the strange objects lost and found in life.

I loved this book. As a life-long dumpster diver I know the
thrill of finding something really great that's been thrown out.
Ted Botha does a wonderful job of conveying the excitement as well as the downside of collecting. He portrays real people on the hunt and their resourcefulness is truly amazing.