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The Stop

Toni Schlesinger, the author of Five Flights Up, has spent the last year visiting and photographing the homes of people who have been hit by the economic crash—people who lost their money, their savings, their terrors, their dream-lives, and their pluck. Step inside their lives with "House Calls."

As I arrived in East Brooklyn to discuss the economy with a poet and a filmmaker ...

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The Line

... I passed people lined up outside a food pantry. The number of people one month reached 9,000, workers reported, as opposed to last year's monthly average of 5,000.

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The Gate

A few blocks away ...

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The Poet

... waits Jennifer Hayashida. She has something to show us.

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The Clogs

Her golden clogs! We hope they will help us all in the economic recovery.

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The Books

Her husband, Benjamin Gerdes, a filmmaker, is in the bedroom reading Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project—in particular, the chapter on gambling and prostitution. Social workers say they are concerned that women turn to the streets in hard times.

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The Concern

Jennifer: “We've gotten more used to being worried, a low-grade hum all the time.”
Benjamin: “We don't own property or have a lot of savings. So we haven't lost a lot.”
Jennifer: “We both teach, but we're on annually renewed contracts.”
Benjamin: “It's led to some tension, how plan-oriented one can be.”
Jennifer: “I've felt you can only be so prepared for having a baby. But we go back and forth on that.”
Benjamin: “We do.”

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The Beat

Jennifer: “My dad was from Hawaii. He was a drummer in a band. My mom was an au pair from Sweden. They met in Sausalito in the early '70s. They made their own sandals out of tires.”

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The Salmon

Jennifer: “When I was 5, my mom moved back to Stockholm. She raised me on her own. She worked as a waitress and then a hostess at The Happy Salmon restaurant. There was a cookbook with salmon recepies and humorous essays about cooking. As a child I found this hilarious. I read the essays over and over again, frequently while eating.”

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The Poetry

Jennifer: “I'm a poet and translator. Since December, we haven't really worked on our own projects. We're looking out for jobs, making sure I keep mine. I feel being afraid has a negative impact on how I relate to my work, especially with poetry which doesn't have a lot of currency even in boom times but now it just seems sort of frivolous, like it's not relevant. Even though I know it is. All this amazing poetry came out of the Depression.”

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The Luck

Jennifer: “We know we're lucky because we have a low rent. If something terrible would happen, it's less scary because you're not taking the risk of living larger but it's also scary that you're living a life where you can't take risks. In some ways, we're waiting for a clear signal that this is just how it's going to be.”

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The Future

Toni: “What kinds of jobs could everyone do if it gets worse?”
Benjamin: “Construction jobs can't be outsourced.”
Toni: “Do we all go into healthcare or food processing and wear hairnets and at night ...”
Jennifer: “... discuss the revolution.”

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The Fire

Jennifer: “We’re making a film about the Swedish Matchstick King, Ivar Kreuger. Leading up to the '29 crash, he created fake trust in a company, fake bonds, a house of cards. But because he founded the Swedish matchstick, his product’s ubiquity superseded the scandal. The company went down. He committed suicide. This is what we’ve been working on for years. We weren’t prepared for the parallels.”