By the time I got to 110th Street, most of the possessions were documented and sorted. There were two gigantic rooms on two separate floors housing the Jacksons' stuff. Both rooms were padlocked. The room I worked in was the star. Save a cabinet or two of master recordings by the Jacksons, almost every item in the room was to be auctioned in Vegas. Three folding tables were joined at the front of the room. On the tables were computers and a printer. Next to the tables and lining the walls were rows of clothes racks with costumes from past Jackson 5 tours; clothing belonging to Tito and his dead ex-wife Dee-Dee; boxes of shoes; boxes of magazines; trunks of musical instruments, including drum sets; promotional materials for albums; posters; boxes of fan mail; fan art; hundreds of photographs; love letters from Tito to his girlfriend Dee-Dee when they were in high school; the original lyrics to "ABC 123"; boxes of pornography and adult material attributable to Tito Jackson; Tito's and Dee-Dee's children's baby books, birth announcements, a dried umbilical cord, tampons, Dee-Dee's clothes; a prescription for Janet , and so on.


Although there were light sources from the ceiling and the dust-covered windows, at times it felt like I was working in a cave, not a Manhattan Mini-Storage. Heat was at a minimum and often we would work with our coats on and drink hot tea from the cafe across the street. One day the storage company decided to replace the old windows with new ones. I ate raw ginger to keep warm. My desk was in the back of the space, which would double as a photo studio for catalogue items. Stalactites of boxes housing instruments, costumes and magazines, loomed above me, while I was simultaneously mesmerized and appalled by what was passing through my hands on the way to a cell in an Excel file. C and Co. had spent several weeks combing through ridiculous hills of paper, cloth, wood, metal, glitter, plastic, nylon, polyester, leather, and sequins ; I would do the same.

The first person I called after I learned about the death of Michael Jackson last July was C. I met C, after I answered a call on Craigslists.org for a cataloguer for a small auction company in New York; It was February 2007. The job paid 16 dollars an hour, required basic cataloguing and writing skills, was 9-5 and would last at least four months. I was broke, behind in rent and over-qualified; I applied anyway. In my cover letter to the hiring manager, I explained that I was familiar with Guernsey's Auctions because Guernsey's had auctioned the paintings of several well known graffiti artists I wrote about for Mass Appeal, a defunct bi-monthly graffiti and street culture magazine I edited. I also explained that I was curious about the organization and the folks who ran it. And I wanted to learn about the auction biz. I was hired on the spot and was given details about the catalogue and subsequent auction of the belongings of Michael Jackson and his family in Las Vegas in May. C and I were introduced three days after my interview and, for about four months, we were tasked with sorting the private and public things belonging to the Jacksons. Of the millions of fans around the world mourning Michael Jackson's death, I believed C and I were two in a handful of people who knew his family intimately via their things.

The story of how possessions belonging to Michael Jackson and the Jacksons ended up in a mini storage in Spanish Harlem is still vague and sordid. One lingering story told by my coworkers was about how Joe Jackson wanted to create a chain of Jackson 5 restaurants akin to the Planet Hollywood chain. Supposedly, Joe wanted to furnish the eateries with things attributable to his sons: memorabilia, ephemera, stage props, photographs, costumes, instruments, awards, etc. The items languished in a storage facility, after Joe's deals went south. Allegedly, after someone forgot to pay the storage fees, the storage company seized the items and sold them at auction to a buyer from New Jersey. This buyer then sold the Jacksons' things to Richard Altomare, former CEO of Universal Express, a luggage shipping company based in Florida. Altomare contacted Guernsey's; deals were made and an auction was born, followed by lawsuits from The Jacksons.

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