Unclaimed metal

One of The Wire's best characters is Bubbles, the struggling addict / informer / street entrepreneur, whose (non-heroin) lifeblood is unclaimed metal.

Then there are the news stories about people pulling wiring from streetlights, and sawing bronze statues in half, to sell to scrap yards.  Someone stole a steel I-beam from a friend of mine down in D.C.  And there's the people I've seen walking from Long Island City across the Pulaski Bridge early in the morning with strange metal articles -- maybe stripped off a power plant, barge or locomotive when no one was looking -- headed for the scrap yard.

So what I want to know is: Why has this piece of metal been sitting in the same spot in Greenpoint for months, unclaimed?  Sure it looks heavy, but it rolls...