Rogue Taxidermist Shows You How to Fish for Animal Parts

Taxidermist: "It's like fishing. Sometimes you find something,
sometimes you don't find anything."Photo courtesy of Nate Hill

As faithful Nonsense NYC subscribers, we’ve been clued into everything from condiment wars to absinthe parties (mmm, absinthe), but we’ve never seen (or smelled) anything quite like the Chinatown Garbage Tour. Tonight at 9 p.m., Brooklyn-based artist and rogue taxidermist Nate Hill will share wisdom gleaned from his weekly searches for animal parts (he incorporates them into his YouTube show “Chop Chop” and his Dead Animal Man project — which you probably don’t want to know about). A test run of the tour, for friends, yielded precious bounty: “We found some frog’s heads,” Hill remembers. “I’ve found small sharks a foot or two long. Usually you’re overrun with fish guts or tails, so when you find something like a shark, it’s really special.”

Asked whether he’s learned anything about Chinatown restaurants and markets while combing through their undesirables (mostly unusable fish guts, scales, and gills), Hill says, “It’s ridiculous how much food is wasted. I’ll find blue crabs that are still alive.” His worst nightmare? “Finding a human hand or finger; I feel like one day that’s going to happen.” Those who don’t mind this possibility should meet Hill at the southeast corner of Canal and Lafayette — where he’ll be waiting with latex gloves, a First Aid kit, wet wipes, and antibacterial gel, along with nuggets of wisdom such as “Treat that box of dead fish like a lady.” Riiight.

Chinatown Garbage Tour [Stoproadkill.org]