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Man Mines Midtown New York Sidewalks
43-year-old Raffi Stepanian makes money searching New York City streets, but it's not loose change or soda cans he's looking for, it's gold. Stepanian says he can make almost $1000 a week scouring the diamond district's streets for bits of gold, platinum, and precious gems. "Material falls off clothes, on the bottom of shoes, it drops off jewelry, and it falls in the dirt and sticks to the gum on the street. The percentage of gold out here on the street is greater than the amount of gold you would find in a mine . . . It comes close to a mother lode because in the street, you're picking up gold left by the industry," he says.
An awfully neat idea which will likely cost him his life. Mining gold and other precious metals is a filthy job dripping with toxic chemicals: arsenic, cyanide, lead, mercury, etc. These chemicals will build up in his system and likely destroy his liver, kidneys and brain.
The article doesn't say which of these chemicals he uses in his mining, so it's probably safe to assume all of them as he's one guy and not bound to the environmental laws of business.
I would like to know, though, what does he do with all the sidewalk waste (tailings) after he's done?
Take care,
Bob.
Chiropractic Saves Lives!
When I saw the title of the article, I thought it was going to be about a muslim planting landmines in the lair of the Great Satan.
and the streets are paved with gold?
Everyone else will start doing it too, and he'll have to go back to his day job.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
until the dzhoos find out. Then there will be a by-law forbidding this practice as soon as they can find the right congress-thing to pay off.
Am I the only one who thought of laying explosives, not extracting minerals, when he saw the word "mines?"
Who else thought this would be more along the lines of about land-mines or claymores? It would at least be a more interesting story...
Also much like old-fashioned gold mining, once others start doing it he can't make as much money doing it anymore
NYC is going to become the next boom town! That's when the whores move in! Oh, wait...
C'mon guys, if you can't spell, use a spell-checker. They have their limitations, but you obviously need one.
In a production-level mine, you will get a lot more minerals out of it than a thousand bucks per week.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Oh, "Can make". I thought he was averaging that at first.
No, sometimes he almost makes $1000 (in the video, that's "over $800")... Other times, maybe he makes nothing? We don't know.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
My first thought was IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices like Iraq and Afghanistan )
I walk on this street going to work, 47th between 5th and 6th. There is no way this guy is getting the equivalent of half an ounce of gold per week from the street. Its not like you look down and see flakes or anything. Insanity.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Someone in the city's administration needed to clean the streets and sidewalks but ALSO save money, perhaps?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Man used to mine streets of NYC for $1,000 a week until he decided to tell his story to a reporter and droves of unemployed new yorkers decided to get in on the action themselves.
Oh great, now I have the Paul Simon song stuck in my head:
"People say I'm crazy
I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes
Well that's one way to lose
These walking blues
Diamonds on the soles of your shoes"
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
NY Personal Property Law Article 7-B section 252, anything over value of 20 dollars must be reported and file title to police. Fail to do so carries misdemeanor charge. If not claimed by owner, the property goes to the finder, only after he/she files for title of that property.
I assume, this guy will be hit with misdemeanor charge pretty soon.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
People... please... this is the New York Post!!!! It's no more believable than The Onion! (...or Fox News, same owner)
Shut 'ur trap.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
why? he finds lots of piece individually worth less the 20 dollars.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Or each piece he finds isn't worth much, but the total of it all combined over a week is.
So each piece may only be worth $2, but he finds 400 of them, bringing the total to $800. So I doubt that personal property law would apply
I worked for 20 yrs. in that area and walked those streets (47th - 49th between 5th and 6th Avenues) thousands of times with nothing more in my mind than annoyance at the street hawkers, bums, mendicants, and hustlers that clog the walkways. There used to be a great tech store there, by the way, corner of 6th Ave. and 48th, forget the name but spent plenty of time there. And a beautiful used book store on 47th amid all the jewelry shops ("wise men fish here"), and of course Scribner's on 5th Ave., where Faulkner and Fitzgerald used to hang out (last I checked it had been turned into a Benneton's, ugh). All those messianic crazies going up and down those block ("Moishiach is Coming!"). What a strange neighborhood. If you've never been to NYC, rent a Dustin Hoffman movie called "Marathon Man" and check out the beginning, which was filmed right there in the diamond district.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
The capitol building of Denver has the dome covered with 200 ounces of 24 carat gold, and it needs replacing about every 40 years. That means it's losing several ounces per year, and most all of it is coming off in rainwater that ends up dumping through the drainage spouts down the sides. People tried to collect it, like this guy. I've been told, but can't find an online reference, that collecting rainwater from the Capitol Building was made illegal to prevent mayhem, so now it goes down the sewer.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I would chide you for being pedantic, but pot... kettle... yeah.
This is America and our streets are paved in silver, gold, platinum and some highly carcinogenic chemicals......
C'mon, guys. Pay attention. The NYP has about as much credibility as your average supermarket gossip rag. That's not to say that everything they say is wrong, but if they're your only source to a story don't put much stock in it.
NY City code enforcement officer fines man for mining gold without a permit. The city's spokesman commented, "If we're going to hold grade-school girls with lemonade stands to our stringent codes, we can't rightly overlook this guy, can we?" The mayor could not be reached for comment.
Stop linking to NY Post articles! It is not a credible news source. Chances are they invented this 47th street gold miner.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I'm not sure what the address is for the Streets of New York server, but only a thousand a week and he's only selling the gold? What's he doing with all the stone, gravel, sand, dirt, redstone, diamond, and lapis he's probably finding?
I can understand how you might be confused because you can spend them on food, housing, etc but that doesn't change the fact that they are loans. Anyone who claims student loans as income to the IRS certainly needs more schooling! LOL
All that gold isn't going to do him much good when the creepers, skeletons and zombies come around. If he can't find some wood, coal, and cobblestone, he's in for a long, dark night hiding in some dirt hole in Central Park.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Assuming someone once owned these bits of valuables, wouldn't he need to wait before claiming the property?
That's the Diamond district where there are lots of sweat shops. My father worked for several large jewelry firms as a diamond setter. The back rooms where the artisans worked wasn't air conditioned during the summer and the large windows were left open (they were the awning type that opened with small slats so you couldn't really jump or fall out of an open window). Many of the work benches were right up against the window, and I could believe that some small stuff would fall to the street now and then. A lot of the gold that got 'lost' was the bits between castings that get cut off. Jewelry is cast using the lost wax technique. Molds are made from latex rubber carrying the impression of the original artwork. Wax is injected into these molds to make wax castings. Next these castings are attached to wax rods which are attached to a base. These rods will form the channels into which molten gold is poured. The wax assembly is lowered into a cylinder and plaster is then poured into the cylinder and allowed to harden. The wax is then melted out which also cures the plaster removing all moisture. This forms a plaster mold into which molten gold is poured. The rods connecting the castings are waste gold which is recycled, but bits of it sometimes get lost (and this adds up). Even the gold filings that are removed from the castings to mount diamonds and other stones is saved to be recycled. Still a far amount probably got blow out the open windows and fell to the street. Small diamonds are hard to mount. The artisan has to drill holes to sit the stone into and raise prongs over the stone with a small chisel. If he slips he can chip the stone or it might go flying away. (small diamonds of fractional carrots are not super expensive, but a piece can have many of them so it adds up).
I actually read the article and it made no mention of Raffi earning almost 1000.00 per week. Slashdot can be a wee bit prone to embellishment. Raffi probably got lucky when he made 819.00 in 6 days but this, by no means, implies that this is a regular amount of revenue. Although, I give the guy credit for ingenuity.
>Crime is at historic lows since they started keeping records
I said that and it's complete nonsense, because obviously records were kept going all the way back to New Amsterdam.
I really meant to say "Since statistics have been published" and that would be 1963 - nearly 50 years ago.
--
BMO
Oh great, now I have the Paul Simon song stuck in my head:
Hmm... that must be annoying. Let me replace it with something else:-
;-)
"Here's a little song I wrote,
You might want to sing it note for note,
Don't worry,
Be happy."
Oh, that's okay... not at all, don't mention it!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The creepers do come out at night there.
So each piece may only be worth $2, but he finds 400 of them, bringing the total to $800. So I doubt that personal property law would apply
Er... why would you think that? If we only have the OP's reporting of the law to go on (and it's correct) then in the absence of any law or regulation that would tie together otherwise unrelated incidences of lost-and-found (i.e. lost by different people) what legal basis would there be for being able to "add them up" like that instead of treating them separately? None, as far as I can see.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
or did we get rid of the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" part?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-06-09/news/29638632_1_gold-dust-gold-rush-jewelry-district
Deep below the workshops in Baghdad's cramped, rundown jewelry district, unemployed men spend their days scouring the city's sewer system for the one thing they say can bring them money: flakes of gold. Several times a month, men desperate for an income descend as far as 15 feet into the dark in search of gold bits that have been washed down the drain by craftsmen cleaning up after a day of etching and molding jewelry.
~$800/week doesn't go very far in NYC though. Meanwhile he's not only pulling precious metals and gems out of sidewalk cracks but also shards of glass, toxic substances (cadmium, lead, etc) bacteria from animals and the homeless, and likely other hazardous substances. He has to get up close and personal with it to retrieve it and then bring all the material to his friend's studio and sift through it by hand.
He's likely uncovering finds deposited over the last 100 years or so, and while occasionally someone loses an earring on the street, most likely he's collecting faster than it's being generated. Advertising his income stream to the world not only will get copycats out there, but will alert the tax authorities to his activities if they were not already in on it.
He's turned a potentially dangerous profession with only a moderate income with little future growth potential into something a whole lot worse by sharing his story.
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The NYtimes magazine had an article about this phenomenon in India's gold filigree carving districts, with street-people trailing and tailing the workers as they went home and sweeping up behind them to catch any loose flecks of gold left over from the gold-engraving carving work.
It's a fairly nerdy topic.
I would even go so far as to say that it's more nerdy than a large bulk of the 'IT related' stories that get posted. Slashdot has gotten pretty badly infected with IT types in the last decade. Sometimes they even assume that's Slashdot's target audience.