Thread: The Occupy Economy

OCTOBER 15, 2011.

The Occupy Economy

By ANNE KADET..

Say what you want about the assorted professionals, philosophers, bums, radicals, students and wage slaves comprising Occupy Wall Street, but they've managed to pull off the impossible. In the center of one of the world's most expensive cities, a place where the average tourist family of four spends roughly $3,500 per visit, they've accomplished something even the guidebooks wouldn't dare promise: New York living on less than $10 a day.

Lexi Ricciardelli, a protester from Central New Jersey, says she packed light for her first foray into protesting. She loaded her backpack with a notebook, makeup kit, pocket knife, bandana, change of clothes, four pairs of underwear and a tube of superglue ("in case my necklace breaks").

That's all she needed. In Zuccotti Park, fellow protesters provided blankets and extra socks, not to mention breakfast, lunch and dinner. Ms. Ricciardelli says she's never eaten so well. Back home, dinner was whatever was on sale at the supermarket: boxed mac 'n' cheese, canned beans, frozen vegetables. Now, she's feasting on vegetarian chili, roasted cauliflower and pasta primavera. Her only expense is coffee, and it's easy to cover the cost—she earns a few bucks a day charging tourists to take her photo.

In less than four weeks, Occupy Wall Street managed to erect what looks and functions like a cross between a high-tech folk festival and a Canadian logging camp. At least for now, there's a lending library on one end and a man doling out cigarettes on the other. There are stations for first aid, phone charging and poster-making. There's even a guy who walks around handing out, yes, free money.

In the Occupied Kitchen, a half-dozen volunteers chop carrots and man the buffet line. It's a puzzle to invent meals for hundreds of protesters using donated food, says Beau Sibbing, a kitchen worker from Wisconsin. It's 50 bottles of ketchup one day, a box of tomatillos the next.

But volunteers, who cook in kitchens offered by nearby residents, have a Costco account and make runs to the Red Hook Fairway for supplies like the poultry that went into a recent evening's gumbo. The tab: about $1,000 a day. Whether protesters would otherwise be buying dollar pizza slices or forking over the $43.46 that Zagat suggests as the average NYC restaurant meal price, feeding a crowd for so little is probably a feat last seen when Jesus got all fancy with the loaves and fishes.

At the Comfort Station, workers dole out toothpaste, deodorant and sleeping bags; neatly labeled bins ("pants," "sweaters," "men's undies") offer clothes for the taking. Every day, a group of older women ("grandmother types," explains one volunteer) come by to pick up laundry and later return it freshly cleaned and folded. In a city where "vintage" apparel costs more than the duds at Barneys and a coin-op wash runs $3, it's no wonder it's said that hipsters have been raiding the clothing bins.

The whole operation runs on donations, of course. More than $5,000 in cash comes in every day through the park's contribution boxes, and supplies flow in from around the country. Kim Heines, a Bensonhurst office manager volunteering on the storage committee, opened her composition notebook to display records of the morning's 90-odd shipments: soap from Winnipeg; rain ponchos from Keller, Texas; sleeping bags from Indiana; gluten-free snack bars from Santa Monica.

The freebies can attract hangers-on. Spooky, a 25-year old from Orlando who is "homeless by choice" and has zero interest in political reform, has enjoyed Zuccotti Park for two weeks. "If you want to hang out and do nothing, that's me," he says. "If you want to protest and get arrested twice a day, that's you."

More typical are Jake Roszak and Zach Welch, buddies from Rochester keeping up with the movement's flurry of demonstrations. Mr. Welch quit his job at a gun factory; Mr. Roszak was a country club groundskeeper. (He calls himself "'The Desperate Housewives' lawn boy, taking my shirt off and waving.") They're eating at local fast food joints to avoid freeloading, brushing their teeth over a trash can and urinating at the local McDonald's, which has become the movement's unofficial latrine. Their larger hygiene issues, however, went unresolved until a West Village man came by to offer a shower.

That man turned out to be Larry Dvoskin, a music producer who characterizes himself as among "the 1%" (translation: lots of money). So far, he's had about three-dozen protesters over for a meal and a bath, saving them the average $250 a night it costs for a New York hotel room. Protesters don't smell as bad as you might expect after two weeks without a shower, he says, and the party never gets out of hand. He ushers them out when it's time to sleep, satisfied he's done his part.

There's a cost to protesting, of course. While most arrive on a one-way fare, even the $200 red-eye special can wipe out a college student. Everyone's buying MetroCards, the local Dunkin Donuts has been mobbed and folks who don't like food lines are scouting alternatives. Wisconsin entrepreneur Brian Pierce has a regular routine: He takes the train to Brooklyn, where he shops at Trader Joe's (raw eggs, seaweed, trail mix), showers at Gold's Gym and does his laundry. He spent $100 his first week and chalks this furious spending rate to his need to invest in basics—like a $3 covered drinking cup.

He's really living the high-life. Since arriving on the overnight Amtrak from Chicago a week ago, in contrast, student Mark Knowles says he's spent less than $20 on subway fare, pizza and a breakfast sandwich. Over the weekend, he met a Brooklyn man who paid him $75 for an afternoon of apartment painting. The Occupied lifestyle, says Mr. Knowles, is a lot cheaper than real life: "I might go home with more money than I had."

—Ms. Kadet, who writes the "Tough Customer" column for SmartMoney magazine, can be reached at anne.kadet@dowjones.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 33462.html

And how will they fare through a New York Winter?