Willets Point

For decades Willets Point has existed as a way to defeat time, the place to go to if you need to keep your vehicle going well beyond its predicted lifetime while you can barely afford to. From tires to body parts, the only sales pitch is their availability, and the ingenuity of the mechanics to put them on your car and keep it going. It is a dirty, messy place, but vital.

Despite all plans to replace it with malls, hotels, fancy restaurants, the process is glacial. The ones forced to move take their clientele with them to smaller enclaves, but their skills go with them, and their clients as well. Those that endure dig in deeper.

I have been periodically updating my record of how it is changing and feel that this history is an important index of the way the city is changing. There is room in it for both photographic exhibitions and curated, even book-length documentation of its social and civic importance.