I do not think I am alone in recounting my teenage years in terms of things bought and the hopes invested in them. As a teenager in California, I wore sweatshirts and tight jeans like the ones Hollister sells, feeling always slightly paler and less experienced than the Kelseys and Jennifers of the world, as though the number of boys I’d hooked up with (zero) was embroidered across my trucker cap for all to see. These feelings rise anew when I enter the Hollister store, and I know why: despite its missteps, the brand nails certain aesthetic truths about my home state.

THE BELIEVER: It seems garbage collection might present this weird moment where, on one hand, you have all of these metaphors and figurative meanings that people react to when they think of garbage, but you also have this very real person, driving the truck and collecting the bins—you, when you’ve been out working with DSNY—just doing her job.

ROBIN NAGLE: Very much so. One of the categories of garbage has its own word in New York City, but it’s a category found everywhere that there is trash. There are things people will put out for discard: they’re done with it, they don’t want to see it again. Somebody else looks at that same object and says, “Whoa, wait a minute. That’s pretty nice. I want to keep that.” Those two chairs you’re sitting in were on the curb to be thrown out. They’re pretty nice chairs. I’m happy to have them. In New York, that’s called mongo. It’s a noun and a verb: those are mongo. People who take things from the trash to keep are mongoing.

Found between the pages of used books, the faded receipts, photographs, ticket stubs, and fox pelts reveal the intersection of life and literature.