I was a 50 year old woman - he was a 25 year old man

New York USA - This snippet of architectural salvage seen in a New York Times pot-boiling love story between a 50 year old woman and her 25 year old lover, hits the nail on the head: the strongest market for salvage is rich middle-aged women. No complaints. It should be compulsory reading for Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace who for the past few years have been extolling the virtues of FSC and eco-friendly new wood, but seem to have completely forgotten that the greenest wood is reclaimed. FoE and Greenpeace are pushing for ever-higher exo-taxes that will be used to allow more reusable wood to be diverted away from salvage yards to be mulched chipped and burned by wood recyclers.

We sat outside at Brasserie Perrier — a fancy place I had never been but where he seemed quite comfortable. It was a warm night. A pack of women in their 20s twittered by, and I watched him watch them as they passed. I waited. He swiveled his head back toward me and said, “Don’t pocketless jeans just get on your nerves?”

He took me to a junkyard of architectural salvage, where we peered though the chain-link fence and talked about what we would buy if we could only get in. Because he had left his parents’ home at 15 to attend a high school for upcoming pro snowboarders, he was domestic enough to keep a cute house dotted with weird things he collected, like old wooden rulers.

We shared many of the same interests — fashion, photography, design. Once, after a long discussion about his burning need for a green leather duffel, I found the perfect one in Details magazine and held up the page to him. “Hey,” he asked, squinting. “is that Balenciaga?”

From Modern Love "We Lived in the Present, Then the Future Arrived" by By FRANCINE MAROUKIAN Published: October 29, 2006. New York Times