Your shopping guide to the best local stores: New York

For years film-industry veteran Eve Radke watched piles of props and costumes go from the set to the trash. Hats, vintage electronics, brand-new toys, everything was tossed away until she and a band of like-minded folks decided to end the waste. They formed a non-profit recycling program for the carpets, sofas, lamps, 8-tracks, and other miscellany they hoarded. Then, in 2011, they opened the Film Biz Prop Shop. Part rental, part retail, the huge warehouse space hidden behind a nondescript gate on President Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn holds all sorts of magical relics from the silver screen. Immaculate old answering machines and reel-to-reel tape players, outdated maps and piles of fake-parchment copies of the U.S. Constitution make for hours of fun poking around — and it was all rescued from a wasteful fate in a landfill.