Tonight at the New York city car pound, I finally gave up on my first and favorite motorcycle, a classic 1974 CB-125 seized by the city. (pictured below, in happier times).
I bought the bike in the East Village years ago, by putting a note on it asking if it was for sale. It was, and I got it for a small cash payment. It needed work, and was without title. After fixing it up I used to ride it to school at UVA and just loved it, though it did break down an awful lot.
Moving it finally to New York city this fall, I decided I'd just use it for decoration or something. Unfortunately one day the city seized it off the street and put it in the car pound.
After four fruitless and painful visits, I've developed something of a literary appreciation for the car pound. At 39th St. on the West Side highway, its an enormous structure, like an aircraft hangar, guarded at various checkpoints. The lobby is not a happy place. At all times there is someone is shouting at the staff.
As for the staff, sullen is the word that was invented to describe them. They used to make me angry but I've slowly started to feel bad for them. Behind their bullet proof glass, the staff has slowly been robbed of their humanity. They have the job of seizing people's property and selling it back to them, and that can't exactly be a line of work you're proud of.
My problem was lack of the precise kind of documentation they needed to charge me money and release the bike. As they said through the bullet-proof glass, how can we know its your motorcycle? I managed to find and give them the bill of sale, but that wasn't enough. There had to be proof of clean title. This could be anyone's motorcycle, they kept saying.
The end result is that its going to be no one's. After 4 months all unclaimed motorcycle are taken out of the city and crushed.
Of course I don't have a shred of a legal case. I accept that a motorcycle, if left on the street without title, is liable to be seized and destroyed. And of course, in the end, its just a piece of metal and rubber, albeit one I was attached to. Compared to the real tragedies people have in their lives, this is minor.
But its sad to lose things, and perhaps the best thing I can say about the episode is that it makes me more of a libertarian and also gave me better insight into Kafka. At points I felt like the sad souls who spend their lives in the court waiting room, as in this section from The Trial.
"They don't show much concern for the public," he said. "They don't show any concern at all," said the usher, "just look at the waiting room here." It consisted of a long corridor from which roughly made doors led out to the separate departments of the attic. There were only a few people in the corridor, probably because it was Sunday. They were not very impressive. They sat, equally spaced, on two rows of long wooden benches which had been placed along both sides of the corridor.
None of them stood properly upright, their backs were bowed, their knees bent, they stood like beggars on the street. K. waited for the usher, who was following just behind him. "They must all be very dispirited," he said. "Yes," said the usher, "they are the accused, everyone you see here has been accused." "Really!" said K. "They're colleagues of mine then." And he turned to the nearest one, a tall, thin man with hair that was nearly grey. "What is it you are waiting for here?" asked K., politely, but the man was startled at being spoken to unexpectedly, which was all the more pitiful to see because the man clearly had some experience of the world and elsewhere would certainly have been able to show his superiority and would not have easily given up the advantage he had acquired. Here, though, he did not know what answer to give to such a simple question and looked round at the others as if they were under some obligation to help him, and as if no-one could expect any answer from him without this help. Then the usher of the court stepped forward to him and, in order to calm him down and raise his spirits, said, "The gentleman here's only asking what it is you're waiting for. You can give him an answer." The voice of the usher was probably familiar to him, and had a better effect than K.'s. "I'm ... I'm waiting ..." he began, and then came to a halt. He had clearly chosen this beginning so that he could give a precise answer to the question, but now he didn't know how to continue.
I was well on my way to becoming that grey-haired man.
I managed to take a last photo of the motorcycle in the pound:
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