Firewood Strikes Chord in New York

And now, a pinky-lift, where-did-you-get-that-darling decorating trend, straight out of flannel and earflap-hat Minnesota: designer firewood.

Paul Wilczek -- owner of Paul's Firewood in Little Falls, Minn., longtime firewood vendor to homeowners in the Twin Cities -- has branched out to sell firewood to sophisticates in New York.

Not New York Mills. New York, N.Y. Manhattan. Area code 212.

But Wilczek doesn't throw a few cords in the back of a pickup and go door to door in Tribeca and Soho. He and his workers select and hand-saw pristine pieces of Minnesota birch. Then they package five to seven moderate-size logs in boxes measuring 11 by 11 by 17 inches, a little more than a cubic foot of wood per box. The cost: about $53, plus $20 to $25 for shipping. Add about $75 more if you want overnight delivery. It's sort of like a Harry and David gift package, only instead of a box of fruit, it's a box of firewood.

Sounds expensive for an armload of logs, especially when Wilczek will deliver and stack a whole cord of firewood, about 128 cubic feet, to a Twin Cities customer for $368.

But most Gothamites aren't burning the wood, Wilczek said.

They want to look at it, stacked up in the fireplace or arranged in a basket. For them, it's a decorative accent, a kind of art object, a thing of beauty, not BTUs. Birch is the cover girl of firewood, Wilczek said, the wood of choice in photo shoots for fireplace catalogs. The bright white bark creates a striking contrast to the dark interior of a fireplace.

"In New York, it's classy to have birch in the fireplace," he said. But birch can't be found locally there.

A news release from his company describes the plight of Cherin Perelman, a Manhattan artist and investor, who searched fruitlessly in the steel and concrete canyons of the big city for wood logs -- "the more natural the better" -- for fireplaces in her New York brownstone and Central Park West apartment. "I absolutely don't like anything inauthentic," she's quoted as saying.

Reached by phone in New York, Perelman said her assistant found Wilczek's company on the Internet. He also located a firewood supplier in New Jersey, an hour and half away, but they didn't deliver.

"You can't get a bike (messenger) to get it from New Jersey," she said. "Just the fact that we could get it from Minnesota -- I think it was from Minnesota -- to my door was worth a tremendous amount." Besides, said Perelman, who's also an accountant, "A New Yorker has no idea what things cost in Minnesota." In New York, she says of the cost of her mail-order wood, "you pay that for lunch."

Perelman said she's actually burned some of her wood, after getting instructions from the fire department. "It's really quite the conversation piece in my apartment." It's not just New York City that's buying. Wilczek has sent his wood to Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago. Even the Playboy Mansion bought some. In the past couple of years, all told, Wilczek has sold about 400 to 500 boxes of logs. A big boost came after a brief article about his firewood ran in Town & Country, a magazine for the trust-fund set. His Web site, www.firewood.com, also has helped him connect with potential customers outside of the Snowbelt.

His latest shipment: a couple of cords of hickory to a restaurant in Hawaii. Cost, including shipping: about $2,500.

"It's spendy," he said. But "hickory is not grown in Hawaii."

Richard Chin is a general assignment feature reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press where he has written stories about sarcasm, brownnosing and a lawyer and named Hitler. he is a former Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He was also a 2000 AASFE Fellowship winner. While covering the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace, he was stopped by Miami Beach police who thought he bore a striking resemblance to serial killer Andrew Cunanan.