In The Golden Flea, Rips presents the story of his gradual immersion in the life of the market, along the way supplying us with a taxonomy of its habitués.

Of the countless New York structures demolished over the years, a parking garage may seem a strange one to mourn, but Michael Rips mourns one with infectious poignancy in his quirky, disarming, sometimes strained yet altogether beautiful memoir.

In breezy, readable prose, Rips delivers this collection of people and things to the reader so that they, like the market’s gems, arrive without provenance. For example, he never dates his decades at the flea, and never names The Cowboy as radical anarchist artist Ben Morea. Protecting his collection, Rips insists upon being the key to unlock their secrets..

Throughout the book, Rips muses, often entertainingly, on the people he met during his forays in this unique environment, but few of his portraits feel more substantial than sketches. While he is to be commended for diligently listening to them spin their background stories...preferring to hear without judgment. Because the author identifies the characters only by first names and nicknames, readers may need to take the findings with a grain of salt. There’s a sometimes-pleasing surreal quality to this journey that fits the idiosyncratic landscape.

Though some of this work is about the birth of a borderline hoarding lifestyle, Rips doesn’t suggest much about causes of his compulsion, nor does he offer more than a few obligatory quips about how his wife and young daughter live with it all. Still, his narrative is a wry and engaging ode to a bygone aspect of N.Y.C. culture..