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Heartbreak, that’s what happens. The video, made by Anthony Sherin, captures the life of a piano left on the streets of New York City. It starts out nicely, people play a few notes, others join in and then… it gets ransacked and stripped to shreds. The saddest part is when a couple comes with dollies hoping to move the piano. The life and death of the mean streets, all in 24 hours. This is why we can’t have good things. [NY Times via Neatorama]
What Happens When You Leave a Piano on the Street?
The council removes it.
This really pisses me off. The people with the dollies were coming to nick it, and what the fuck do people gain from destroying it? Christ, I’m all angsty now. Bastards.
Well it had been there 24 hours, and it is just an old piece of crap. I guess people and city workers aren’t fond of shite collecting on the roadside, bastard fly tippers. If it was outside my house in this weather it would have been log burner fuel in 5 minutes flat.
Agree to disagree.
Yeah, I think there’s a big difference between (a heap of rubbish bags, stinking waste and dog turds), and a piano! It wasn’t hurting anyone or causing a nuisance or anything. For those 24 hours it made the passers by smile, and yet it gets taken away. What does that say?
I really don’t know :/
I don’t know, if there was a piano on a suburban street, that could get rather a nuisance in the middle of the night? Some drunk twat (myself) playing chopsticks wrong whilst lost on the way home.
So how do you explain a worthy piano happening to be abandoned to block a path and become a menace? I am sure anyone would have advertised it as free to good home first, I guess people called around and thought, nah, it’s a piece of shite. What would happen if you put a new £10k piano in the street? I am guessing as it is worth something people would take it to use or sell, if like this piano instead it was worthless and not worth the effort then what do you think is the right thing to do? People tend to scrap worthless things and keep the ones that have value, people are funny that way!
You have a right to disagree and hoard as much shite as you like
I wouldn’t say hoard, it’s just if it was going to be removed, call the council or be productive, don’t just trash it.
I’m guessing the cast iron frame, which will be worth more than the piano most likely.
Sad though. Only ever seen one of these (piano on the street things)in England, which is surprising seen as how many are free on gumtree as long as you collect (again, cast iron frame is heavy).
We should start a movement dammit! Move those pianos outside! Into parks! Cover the base in concrete! It’d be more worthwhile than blimmin’ planking. Maybe not in winter though. Is chilly out there.
You overestimate how much cast iron costs. Even the shittest piano is worth quite a bit; there’s surprisingly few makers of analogue, proper pianos. I’ll join the movement!
Yeah but who’s to buy them? I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m just going by the big hunk of metal and the gumtree ads for free pianos. There’s less of a want for a cheap (shitty) upright in the home nowadays. Also I think there’s a thing that once the iron frame cracks, the pianos fairly useless.
But still. I’ll bring the concrete, you pick the park, we’ll roll on down a piano!! I only know Martha by Tom Waits but still. Movement!!
I did 10 lessons in piano! I can plink plank plonk.
It’s been tried. We had some here in Cambridge a couple of months back, they had plastic covers to protect them from the weather, such a shame it was only temporary. Only one of them got stolen…
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Education/Universities/Play-your-part-in-community-piano-event-11102012.htm
In Liverpool, we’ve had a whole load of them scattered around the city centre for awhile now, with signup sheets and everything for people to come play, or just to play whenever it’s empty. I’m pretty sure nothing major has happened to them so far…
I played the one outside the Odeon a few months ago. However, I don’t think it was there last time I came up to Liverpool (I imagine it was a temporary thing). Around the same time there were also loads around London too.
I think they remove them in late autumn, to stop them getting damaged by the cold over winter. They disappeared this time last year, then returned again.
In fairness is was probably a heap of junk.
I remember hearing on Radio 4 not long ago that in the early 20th century, piano’s were very fashionable to have in the home. This meant there were all sort of budget pianos being built, and a lot of them are falling to pieces now. Quite whether they’re worth repairing I don’t know.
I have some sympathy for the people who tried to take it away. It’s a piano for goodness sake, it doesn’t belong on the street. They were probably local to the area and realised if they didn’t take it it would get destroyed like that.
Quite how those people thought that a fitting end for a working piano was to tear it to pieces was beyond me, but then, it looked fairly old, and it was in the middle of the street.
pianos**** I’m becoming my own worst enemy by using apostrophes wrong
Lets leave a unattended beaten down piano in a street of new york and get upset when it gets pulled apart or inevitably vandalized. What do you think will happen? Put some emotive music behind it like its some super sad situation, I will do a montage of me packing my christmas decorations to the same music on jan the 6th and lets see how monstrous that will look. What annoyed me was that they fly tipped the debris in the green.
Might I add, not one of those people looked like they could play the thing, and just messing around with the keys, basically it’s retirement was to be some sound emitting litter for slightly curious passers by. If I lived above that art project id crack open a beer watching it get demolished.
Nonsense. Regularly I see a piano outside St. Paul with the sign “Play Me” and nobody treats it like that. It is covered to protect it from the rain and locked onto something.
If you want to have nice things you need to treat them like nice things; dump them like rubbish in the middle of a pavement (blocking half of it as well) and they will be treated like rubbish.
Utterly ridiculous…A piano in the street is fine, as others have said, plenty scattered around, asking to be played, and people play them. I’ve not seen them ransacked save a couple of keys which have clearly been hit too hard.
Watching a random person walk up to it, try it out and smile is something that would make my day so much better, and seeing them just needlessly smash it up and tear it apart, then just dump it in what looked like a garden? What a fucking joke.
If something like that appears in the streets, and your not happy with it, call the council or the authorities, not just smash it up. As for those two who came back to roll it away? Fair play to them, it looks as though it’d been 24 hours, with no visible sign on it to say that it’s owned, and being left in the street like that, then why not take it? Part had already been ripped off, they may have wanted to restore it or something…
It’s just a shame we live in a world where people will needlessly destroy things like that, whether it’s expensive or not.