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Arts & Entertainment

If It's Broken, They'll Fix It

Whether you bring an item for repair or stop by to learn, the Fixer's Collective instills a can-do attitude.

This year, fight the urge to go along with the oft-repeated New Year slogan: "Out with the old, In with the new."

Rather than throw out a temperamental lamp or a snapped high-heeled shoe, bring worn-out items to the Fixer’s Collective. For a $5 donation, they might just make them as good as new. And in the do-it-your self, recycling friendly borough of Brooklyn, repurposing is trendy. 

Every Thursday from 7 to 9:30 p.m. the small group meets at Proteus Gowanus, an interdisciplinary gallery and reading space neighboring the canal.

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Once inside the Collective’s cramped workspace, visitors are immediately taken by the array of tools and bins of materials hanging from the walls. Housed in a former box factory, the industrial locale easily conjures up images of hurried hammers and brute force.

“People bring their broken things and work on fixing them together,” explained David Mahfouda, an artist and one of Fixer’s Collective's founders.

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As visitors arrived on a recent Thursday night, they placed their "patients" on the table for examination. One hopeful woman came carrying a clock that no longer ticked or tocked, adorned with colorful flowers and laced with gold trim. Yet another patron sought repair for a suitcase with a jammed handle.

Immediately, the group of fixers and visitors collaborated to diagnose the problems. With some patient tinkering and a few spritzes of WD-40, in the case of the clock and the suitcase, both items were restored to their former usefulness.

The Fixer’s Collective grew out of a former exhibition at Proteus Gowanus called “Mend.” The exhibition ran from 2008 to 2009, but was such a hit that when the antiquated tools, giant mended American flag and landscape of recycled cartons were replaced by the next year’s theme, the Fixer’s Collective stayed on.

While the group’s size fluctuates, there are usually about six fixers, all of whom have semi-professional experience, whether as a contractor, seamstress or toymaker.

One of the goals of the social experiment is to teach others how to repair with patience, which, as any member of the group can tell you, sounds easier than it really is.

Our reporter came to the group bearing an automatized paisley print umbrella that would no longer open with the flick of a button. The limp umbrella passed through the hands of at least five fixers, who did not hesitate to ask for hints to the problem. After an hour, a solution was reached: Tony (a carpenter/sculptor/contractor) fashioned a dowel out of a pencil on the spot. Then, by attaching the pencil to the umbrella in two places, it could stay open. The umbrella takes manual assembly in order to open, but it opens nonetheless.

But for those items not fortunate enough to be repaired, they can usually be repurposed. 

“If you can’t fix it, what else do you want to do with it? We leave it up to [the client],” said Vincent Lai, a fixer of one year, who had been fiddling with a malfunctioning printer.

Perhaps one of the best examples of this sort of repurposing is the Collective’s specialty umbrella tote bag. For a $25 donation, owners of malfuntioning umbrellas can transform them into a cotton-lined sack—a much more earth-friendly option than adding them to mass umbrella graves that are New York City sidewalks on a rainy day.

And since the donation-run collective raised over $6,000 last month through Kickstarter, they will not only be able to pay rent for the year, but acquire even more tools and materials.

“Now we’re going to start fixing more stuff," said Mahfouda. "This is kind of by the seat of our pants still, which is fun, but I think we can do it better."

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