Cinnamon, a former coworker of mine, started making dolls over two years ago. She works out of her Bronx one-bedroom at night, after coming home from her full-time graphic design job.

There were large, sweating bottles of beer that had been replenished several times over the course of two hours. I dropped the zeroes, divided by three, double-checked the trickier-than-it-should-be conversion of baht to dollars and—it was still $65.