Jerky slow motion images of downtown New York and the weather forecast on the radio form the introduction to Cohen's story of how a chance incident opened his eyes. In jumpy and searching images, New York is shown as a ghostly, unreal decor for Cohen's discovery. He tells how he arrived in the city a decade ago and barely managed to keep himself alive by working as a pushcart vendor selling soft drinks and peanuts. Every day, he left for 9th Avenue to do his humble business. He describes how his paradoxical presence in the street scene was totally unnoticed by some, while, for others, he became steadily more visible. On the one hand he experienced his spot behind his pushcart as a window onto the life of the streets, while on the other, it was a wall that closed him off. He learned to see things that normally would have escaped his attention. Boredom drove him to observe the details and the strange appearances that the street normally keeps hidden from the average passer by. He comes into contact with a tramp like figure who has become an expert at fishing out valuables that have fallen into the subway grills. With precision and skill, the man continually fishes jewelry, coins and strange objects from the belly of the city. This man lends him a book full of strange lists which can only have been noted down by an obsessive person. It is a meticulous biography of the cosmopolitan city. Places, incidents, strange observations are carefully noted alongside each other. The categories, however, are mysterious and poetic, and haunt him. But, since he can't afford the eight dollars that the book costs, he is obliged to give it back. But he can't get the strange report out of his mind and his observations are intensified by the alternative categorization. The city becomes a chain of words and strange concepts as if every observation provides you with missing words for a complicated crossword puzzle. The city becomes a fictitious syvoice and a gigantic props cupboard that reveals itself to you in its changed form. Once seen like that, the city lets itself be seduced to surrender its secrets. Like a cheap hooker, she is for sale in all her details, a broken fair of goods.
– Willem van Weelden
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Editing Jeff Stabenau, assistant editing Kay Hines, Sound mixing Patrick Belden, Music Gabriel Cohen, Todd Colby, Vic Chesnutt, Stephen Vitiello, Jem Cohen, assistant post-production Dave Peterson, voicemen Todd Colby, Monroe D. Cohen, Dedicated to Walter Benjamin, Ben Katchor
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