#allyn baum

"Grate fishing" was a popular New York sport for years. Here, a 12-year-old boy goes fishing with "uncanny skill" for coins and other treasures in one of the city's subway gratings in 1959. His only tools: a small rock tied to a 12-foot piece of string and some lard (which is used to make the rock sticky). He then lowers the line and hauls up his catch.

Sometimes a dime, sometimes a subway token, sometimes a ring of gold. The boy was was surrounded by a large crowd in Times Square, an area home to the most profitable fishing spots. "Sometimes people throw coins down there to see if I can get them," he said. "I'll get anything except pennies. I don't bother with pennies."

His earnings for the day? Four dollars in coins, plus six subway tokens, which he used to buy clothes and contribute to the support of his widowed mother.

Other boys (and they were boys) used bubble gum to attach the treasures to their "fishing pole."

"Waiting" New York City subway, 1958 Allyn Baum

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“Being in love was like running barefoot along a street covered with broken bottles. It was foolhardy, and if you got through it without damage it was only by sheer luck. It was like taking off your clothes at lunchtime in a bank. It let people think they knew something about you that you didn’t know about them, it gave them power over you. It made you visible, soft, penetrable; it made you ludicrous.”

Margaret Atwood, from Bodily Harm

Allyn Baum / The New York Times