Ramón López
For many years, as I’ve thrown threads to weave tapestries, I’ve longed for a magical object that would call me to hang my cobwebs. Not the loom—I know that well—but something as ordinary in the urban world as a branch or a vine might be in the rural one. Something that would also link the Puerto Rican life of the Island and the Diaspora. I yearned for the magic of discovering that everyday piece that would welcome and locate my woven presence on an unexpected yet familiar map—charming and ordinary, wondrous and cheap: a way to weave directly upon something so deeply mundane that it would place me face to face with the people, free of the elitist mediation of the art object.
Given the textile nature of my struggle, I needed the ever-present grid—but mounted on something irreverent and discarded—so that the weaving would become a magical enrichment of banality. With that fresh and twisted intent, I turned my attention to mosquito screens, cyclone fences, screen doors, plastic mesh used at construction sites, and so on. These were interesting alternatives, but none were magical; none fell into place the way I hoped. Gradually, I pushed the matter aside. But of course, life delights in unsought discoveries, and as it turns out, throughout my entire search I had been sitting on the very mystery I desired without realizing it: I always weave seated on a milk crate. A milk crate, you know.
Identification File
The milk crate occupies a curious space between industrial capitalism—a petroleum-based object manufactured to transport and store vessels of milk—and popular ecologism—an item found easily in the trash and repurposed for countless uses. Moreover, the milk crate has an extended family of crates, boxes, and racks that facilitate the commercial movement of products ranging from bread and candy to soda.
In the U.S., these items of commercial circulation come in vibrant or neutral colors, and their lattice of lines and holes forms a visual geometry of endless possibilities—from basic grids to surprisingly intricate decorative patterns. In cities, we see stacks of these containers behind stores and in loading areas—often right beside the trash—making them easy targets for appropriation. People often grab them discreetly, glancing both ways before crossing that thin line between recycling and theft. These crates are stamped with the names of corporate owners and emblazoned with warnings such as “Misuse of this case is liable to prosecution” and “Warning: Use by other than registered owner punishable by law.” So, something as simple as making practical use of a clearly useful item becomes a crime—and if I choose to turn them into the foundation of my textile art, then I too am a criminal. How cool is that?
At any rate, milk crates are far more versatile and popular than their kin. The openings and grids on their five sides—four identical and one distinct base—are a universe of possibilities for knotting, tying, threading, and weaving my way. That’s where I’m at. But the title of this text refers to something more.
Brief Catalog of Uses
What made the milk crate click with me in that magical moment was its deep presence in the everyday life of my people—a world of fascinating improvisations reflecting both imagination and common sense. One early morning, as I carried a few crates home from a supermarket parking lot (before the store had even opened), a man across the street smiled at me with generous Puerto Rican complicity: “Hey, brother, I’ve got them under the floor of my room, mattress on top, and I sleep just fine.”
And they do look fine when stacked into bookshelves or storage units—perfectly aligned with no wobble or tilt. They make excellent file boxes for documents, or catchalls for nearly anything. For kids, they are endless-play toys. Teens cut out the bottoms, nail them to trees or strap them to posts—instant basketball hoops, excuse the redundancy. Line one with thick moss and voilà: a planter for tropical flora. As I said at the beginning, they make great seats, and if needed, several can be joined to form a table. In this age of efficiency and tidiness, they’re great organizers for LPs, CDs, cassettes—even floppy disks. For humbler uses, toss in your laundry and turn them into hampers.
A friend of mine, aware of the practicality of biking in the congested streets of Chicago, has one mounted behind his seat where he carries his backpack, lunch, or whatever else he needs. On the other hand, the hipsters—those yopis who love the utility of these crates but would never stoop to digging through trash or sullying their decor with such vulgar items—buy the same plastic crates at designer stores. No owner’s markings. No criminal warnings. Same mesh. Same colors. Trendier shades. But ultimately, they’re for the same thing—only less durable than the rugged street crates built to withstand the pounding of interstate commerce.
(Here, dear reader, stretch this space as much as you like and insert your own list of uses for the milk crate—accompanied, of course, by your sparkling commentary.)
On Territory and Masks
The milk crate also deserves mention as a tool for negotiating public and private space during Chicago’s brutal winters. When snow piles up, people lose their parking spots unless they go outside and shovel them clean. But then come the freeloaders—the neighbors who never shovel, yet take the cleared spots when you’re gone. To counter this, people place chairs, trash cans, and other objects in their dug-out spaces, staking an unofficial claim. But nothing works quite like the milk crate. Still, the city refuses to recognize the people’s right to the patch of street in front of their homes. It sends trucks to remove all “space savers,” citing ugliness and illegality. The result? Bitter neighborly feuds—reveal the selfish individualism of urban life and the fragile boundary between solidarity and egoism.
But the milk crate also opens mysterious and suggestive doors into the universal realm of identity play. One of its most common and easily found designs turns into a mask when flipped upside down. The holes in the corners become eyes; the side-handle opening becomes a mouth. All that remains is to embellish this basic form using the lattice to attach objects and decorations. The result is a striking mask—but best of all, there are three other sides to use, creating three additional faces on the same structure, offering a wild mix of identities—fantastical or culturally rooted. The base is perfect for adding hair, wigs, or hats—and allows the crate to be worn on the head. A hole in the center also allows it to be hung by a string—spinning in a circle, displaying four consecutive faces. All of this is great fun, yes, but also a symbolic expression of a fundamental concept in shamanism: four sides and a center. The banal ascends into the spiritual. And then, it may return again to the magical-practical—perhaps as the lampshade of a humble table lamp.
Now, the Ethnology
If we take the time to engage with this subject seriously, much can be gleaned. Every culture contains objects more symbolically loaded than others—not for their economic value, but because they are vessels for complex social relationships. For our Taíno ancestors, the hammock was more than a resting tool. It symbolized status and authority, gender dynamics, spiritual communication, and individuality within the community. It was the most essential possession—what you took when leaving home, the equivalent of today’s “leaving with only the clothes on your back.” For a people nearly naked, the hammock was both survival and a mark of belonging. It was, in fact, a modification of the fishing net.
In our urban culture today, many objects embody layers of social meaning. Shoes and cars—each in their own way—transmit much more than mere function. The milk crate is marginal, but precisely because of that, it’s well-suited to expressing the contradictions and potentialities of a culture where collective meanings are constantly shifting and must be redefined. Issues of waste and recycling, prestige and shame, utility and excess, practicality and imagination, wealth and poverty, islandness and diaspora, tradition and contemporaneity, legality and transgression, the mass-produced and the personalized—all of these themes find direct expression in how people repurpose, use, and transform something as ordinary as the milk crate. A toothbrush tube, for instance, doesn’t carry such expressive weight. A t-shirt, on the other hand—especially one with a graphic—can open a world of communication. Weaving on a milk crate means weaving atop the very fabric of daily redefinitions—because to weave, of course, is to join the disjointed into a meaningful whole.
A Final Little Touch
Let me tell you now
about my group Bembeteo,
who tell stories on stage
in Chicago and on the Island
in bomba and plena time
with tapestries and poems
and plenty of song and dance.
As you may well know,
in the bomba tradition
sticks are struck
on the body of a barrel—
these are the famous cuás,
recalling our Taíno ancestors
whose drums had no skins
but were hollow trunks
singing straight from the tree.
To bring this tradition
into a modern setting,
Bembeteo now plays its rhythms
on the joyful tapping
of the plastic lattice
of a humble milk crate.
