You'd think sitting on a roof in the middle of the summer, surrounded by +150 pigeons AND their droppings would be unpleasant, at the least. Thats exactly what i thought before visiting my first pigeon coup. Oddly, its pretty relaxing and like a good massage, hard to get up and return to whatever. But John kept offering beer and the breeze generated from 150 pairs of wings made it hard to leave. And easy to go back to often.
John Mikio, a native of Williamsburg Brooklyn and a Vietnam War vet, owns the birds and runs a pigeon collecting hobby. In his own brooklyn-tough-guy-aloofness, he loves the birds, despite how he addresses them: "the fucking birds keep me busy.", "Some fucking cat ate a fucking bird." "Looks like the fucking birds are getting sick again", and so forth.
Its an expensive and time consuming hobby. John spends $400 a month on pigeon feed. Birds fly off or get snatched by hawks and cats, spooking the coup and threatening their numbers. A small influx of pigeons from other coups helps the numbers game. Part of the attraction, like a herder, is balancing how many pigeons one retains! Rouge pigeons fall under the "Finders, keepers" rules of etiquette. their identifying legbands are removed and kept as a trophy, replaced with John's legband.
As the neighborhood "develops" to change the original fabric of Brooklyn, landlords are no longer renting rooftops to Pigeon owners. John's rooftop belongs to a member's only social club. John is not only the accountant for he club, but a ranking member as well. so his coup, at least for now, will be safe.
more photos "Editorial 4" www.RobertHooman.com
1 comments:
This is great!
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