HONEST SCRAP (1980-2024)

Like all my books it’s not a photo opportunity or some sort of overall look at scrapping. It emerges out of life and experience within the subject i depict, and the life i lead, and is guided by this. Having said that i’m grossly familiar with two of America’s most wild, down and dirty junkyard zones – the Forgotten Triangle in Cleveland and the Iron Triangle in New York. Honest Scrap is centered in the Forgotten Triangle and spins out beyond, but always returns to the homeland for scrappers in that city, which for many years seemed to be Scrap City with a vibrant scrapper world all over its neighborhoods that were all tied to old, lost or dying industry, much of it connected to working with or making metals both ferrous and non-ferrous

I’ve been shooting scrappers since early eighties. Some, up until their last days. There were some chance encounters, but, by and large, everybody gets to know each other over time.

Joe Brick, master brick recycler in his yard. We’ve been hanging around together, since first meeting. In 2022, Joe’s wife died of covid, then Joe had a heart attack. His heart (and money) is in that yard, so it’s a difficult time. His son has completely taken things over now, and, i’ll pick Joe up at home and go visit the brickyard.

The scrappers have been a feature of this city, following the ebb and flow of abandonment, until recently when it has died down to its lowest levels since the seventies.

One of the peak years for scrapping were after the big industrial recession of the early eighties, and 2003 – 2010, following two recessions, and always a fixture of life in the city. In 2010 demolitions were increased dramatically with much funding on a state, and federal level. The “housing crisis” that followed and caused the 2008 recession was too much and, for the first time, no structure would be spared. All the abandonment is to be demolished and remediated. The city is now snaggle-toothed and even blocks have become empty of all their homes.

Scrappers often viewed with contempt as thieves, with drug and alcohol probnlems. Not to mention the positives of recycling metals, the most recyclable material in the world.

The author in the old Victoreen Geiger Counter Factory, scrapping.

I got a lot of stories. It’s been a long haul. It’s not right to spill all your beans over something as public as the internet, and doing something for so long would naturally mean there are many stories to tell from deep inside the lives of these scrappers. Of the living, many of them i still see and hang out with today. To respect folks i could recite some things without naming anyone, even if they’re dead, which many are.

If they were into drugs, then many supported it by their own hard work, and not taking anything so they could get high.

All in all the scrapper population follows the economics of both metal prices and abandonment. For them the golden age was the late seventies 🔊 into the the 1980s, slowing by 1995 when the economy stabilized and employment grew in the Clinton years, only to come back with a vengeance, in the highs and lows between 2001 and 2010 including this city topping the list of poorest big cities for a couple of years.

Since 2015 it’s a dead scene, slowly fading in a city both picked clean, and, ready for mass demolitions, and, eventualy, even the houses, that shelled the metals and scrap were completely gone.

I ended up with a lot of friends for life. One was and is, Joe Brick, although. since 2022 he’s retired from brick recycling, and, to be honest, slowly dying, without his wife who died of covid in January, 2022. Joe buried her, went back to the brick yard, but his heart gave out, and he’s been stuck at home, since.

This was Joe’s last brick yard, another classic Rust Belt neighborhood of both closed and operational industries, and, abandoned and occupied homes and shops. Part of a much larger yard including abandoned industrial structures. Randy, the owner and a major demolition contractor, would drop loads of bricks from the many buildings and factories torn down over a period of forty years. Joe’s son,Mike, has taken over the work now, as Joe is laid up at home for over three years. When his wife died in 2022 from covid, then Joe had a heart attack, he began to stay at home and stopped working the first time in his life.

VIEW the slideshow.

Joe Brick, The Day I Met Him

This is the heart of the Forgotten Triangle, and i had been hanging around its scrapyards and brick yards for twenty-five years, when i saw this guy with a fire recycling bricks, which, for me, was its third reincarnation as someone's brick yard.
I took my camera and tripod, and shot as i approached him, and intuitively felt, he was ok with me. We hung out and shared stories of the area and he spoke to me of bricks. That was 2005 and we still hang out quite a bit. Joe is eighty-nine years old today and is still slinginging bricks in another section of town, where i have always hanged out as well. He left the Triangle around 2011, along with everybody and everything that was left there, and is still working all the time over off St. Clair.

Home & Three Houses, Grand Street

The camera is positioned in the backyards of the homes across the street, that had been demolished in 2019. The home with the lights is still there in 2021, and all else is gone. It was once part of a huge immigrant Hungarian neighborhood whose acreage was largely insdustrial, like Eberhard Manufactiuring that was 200 feet south and has been entriely demolished.
A parkway called the Opportunity Corridor is now coming through here. In a giant swath of land, in a couple of different neighborhods, there were only seventy homes that had to be compensated by eminent domain rights of the DOT.
This was called the Forgotten Triangle, it's heart just blocks away, and was truly a scrappers paradise and outlaw zone. That name fading, because it deteriorated organically over a period of forty-five years, until nothing was left. And, under those conditiuons, what a place it was.
That last home that remains, i shot in winter, 2020 and 2021, to match the older shot, like this shot, at night, and, of course, it was an experience. Dealing with multiple people, on one of the most desolate streets in America, all of them partying is always a trip. I've never come across a better place for a cheat spot in a city that had many.

Waste Site, Forgotten Triangle, East 83rd Street

East 84th Street, to East 80th Street, in this section was the cluster of homes ithat went up in in the lfirestorm, like much of the city itself, is populated in homes, railyards and factories existing in close proximity to one another, and, in the Triangle, a very old industrial area, itwas thick with this mix of residences and factories. 
This, at one time, was an industrial facility and homes, became a brownfield, that, at one time, would mean a progression to dump. This one lasted two years, and was allowed to meet the surge in demolitions where the debris from thousands of homes and factories needed remdiation or just plain storage.
This was because, beginning in 2010, a mass demolition effort began to get rid of the 12,000 abandoned structures in the city, which suddenly needed places to store the pulverized houses of the city.

Stacked Engines, Junkyard, Grand Avenue

Deep in the Triangle at one of the many scrapyards that six years later would be gone. Today the Opportunity Corridor goes right throught here, and that's what finally got the Triangle completely tore down.