Brooklyn Christmas Tree Workers Coop Seeks To Fix The Indus-Tree

PROPSECT HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Ellis Roberts came to New York City to join Occupy Wall Street, and he stayed to sell Christmas trees in Brooklyn.

Eleven years later, Roberts — who spends the off season as a stagehand working with artists such as Bob Dylan and Dolly Parton — is taking his passion for social justice and applying to an industry he says is among the most exploitive in New York City.

And he's doing it the Brooklyn way, with a coop.

The seeds were sewn for New York State of Pine — which currently boasts of six members and three locations in Park Slope, Williamsburg and its original outpost at St. Johns Place and Underhill Avenue — after Roberts left Zuccotti Park in 2011 and decided to stay in the city.

"I didn't want to go back to Bethlehem," he said of his hometown in Pennsylvania. "Once you're here, you can't really go back."

Roberts answered an ad looking for tree sellers for one of the larger Manhattan vendors, which meant grueling days for little pay, he said.

"It was 35 straight 14 hour days," he said. "I think I made the equivalent of $3.25 an hour plus tips."

After a few years working for a slightly better tree business, he decided that there had to be a better way.

"The tree industry is one of the more exploitative industries in the city for transient workers," Roberts said. "Migrant workers, people passing through, or people who just need a part time gig to make rent."

Fusing his working-class politics with his passion for selling tress on the streets of New York led him to start New York State of Pine in 2019, a democratic, horizontally-organized worker-owned cooperative — no bosses allowed.

"We think we can provide better prices to the customer because our company doesn't have anyone in the heated room or on a beach," Roberts said. "We're all out here getting our hands dirty. And that's basically what we're about."

During the off-season, Roberts works as a union stagehand for live music shows, setting up for big names like Willie Nelson.

"I got to go on his tour bus," he said of the Red Headed Stranger. "Came out a little worse for wear."

But his holiday season starts in March, when Roberts says he basically takes a massive road trip along the East Coast tree-growing area — from Nova Scotia to North Carolina.

"Instead of buying from large wholesalers, I knock on doors and speak directly to farmers," Roberts said.

This year, many of his trees come from a farm in Vermont run by a French-Canadian couple in their 80s, while the rest came from North Carolina.

When it came time to get the trees from Vermont, the octogenarian farmers told Roberts and his fellow workers: "oh no, we'll load [the trucks]," but Roberts insisted they helped.

"They put us to shame," Roberts said, "they've been doing it for a long time."

By forming these direct relationships with farmers, rather than the large companies or tree brokers, Roberts says they can run a far more efficient operation, which increases pay for everyone while also giving customers savings over the competition.

"It's a lot better than dealing with brokers," he said.

Once they tag and then relocate the 1-2,000 trees New York State of Pine sells each December, the next step is finding a place to sell their conifers.

Thanks to a 1938 "coniferous tree" exemption enshrined into city law by a very pro-tree city council — over the veto of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia — tree vendors don't need permits, only permission from property owners. And enough space to allow for foot traffic on the sidewalks.

This year, New York State of Pine has extended their locations beyond Prospect Heights to a location in Park Slope, at Seventh Avenue and Berkeley Place, and in Williamsburg, at Bedford and Metropolitan Avenues. On their website, they also do online orders.

When it comes to the trees themselves, Roberts says he appreciates all of them as works of art.

"I'm not critical of trees," he said, "the perfect tree is the one that fits in your space."

Since visiting the tree farmers himself, Roberts says he admires the amount of work, and artistry, that goes into shearing and shaping each tree throughout its six, or for some, 10 year long journey to grow seven feet tall.

"All the farmers do it different," Robert said of the tree shaping, "the Vermont farmers do it different than the Canadian farmers. Canadian farmers do it far differently than the North Carolina farmers. There's regional styles to trees."

Roberts says he's become so committed to selling trees, and trying to fix what he views as a broken industry, because he loves to help spread holiday joy and see the same families buy from him year after year.

"There's some families I've been selling to with kids that were one years old and now they're five or six," Roberts said. "Forging those relationships — that's a big part of it. That's that's something I enjoy quite a bit."

When it gets closer to the end of the season, Roberts often donates trees to families down on their luck during the holiday season. One reviewer on Google Maps called his tree donation to them last year "a Christmas miracle."

Roberts has ambitious aims, for the cooperative, for the industry at large, but he's humble enough to admit that what New York State of Pine is offering is a facsimile of the real deal.

"The best way to buy a tree is to go cut it yourself in the woods, the worst way is Home Depot," Roberts said. "And this is the second best way."