Dumpster Diver

[lightningBugout]

list crazy finds here:

-- Last night I went to throw some stuff away. Dumpster was full and I had to make some space. Sitting right there on top of the muck was a copy of the first Devo 45 in perfect shape. Fifteen years ago this would've made me shit.



btw -- if anyone out there truly needs this record for a collection or is an over the top devo fan, pm me and its yours.

[Seamus OBlimey]

PROGRAMMING THE NATION

[barracuda]

I have been, in the day, a fairly passionate admirer of the Brothers Mothersbaugh, but nowadays, since you can find Mark's music in a wonderful variety of commercial productions, movies, kids teevee shows, etc. I am pretty much able to fully get my tongs of love out whenever I need to strip away the garment.

I had a few moments of bad buddah nature when I saw that record. I happen to have a mint copy which I bought brand new back then, and it flashed through my head how maybe I needed another. But I've got a gut feeling it was only a momentary lapse of reason.

[lightningBugout]

It was a nice reminder - I sometimes forget the early devo was so fucking ballsy.

[Seamus OBlimey]

Highlight of my week is a box of 7" singles including..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pw8nBYPqUc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D67kmFzSh_o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64dUqMxxyjQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YriPIujLtsA

Shame I don't have a turntable but they're one of those things not usually worth taking home and trying to fix.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVLpaiH2hbQ

[compared2what?]

I found one on the sidewalk about two blocks from here on Wednesday. It was just sitting there looking pretty much exactly like that picture. Manual. Foot pedal. Singer Stylist Industrial Strength Zig-Zag Domestic Sewing Machine, Model 413, Made In Great Britain, 1971. Except that it also had the plastic carrying case top next to it. Which was good. Those things weigh, like, 743 pounds, and are difficult enough to lift and transport when they're all buckled into their cute little housings. Also, they last forever and sew through anything. The one I found works perfectly. If you'd have asked me a week ago, I would have said I'd rather have a Featherweight. But that was crazy talk. I just didn't yet know what true love really was.

Not that I've tried, you know, sewing with it. I just made sure it ran quietly and smoothly enough for me not to have to lift it up again immediately in order to put it back out on the street. You wouldn't believe how heavy it is. Honestly. Really, really heavy. Especially on a humid day. Ouch. My back.

[Penguin]

c2w:
I got one of those!
Or almost, mine says "Singer Starlet", Made in France. Must be early 70s as well. Seems to be lighter built than yours.

Oh yes I have a sewing machine ... Got it for free used, thou not from a dumpster this time. Have used it mostly for repairs, annd making short pants out of worn-out long pants, and attaching cloth emblems.

My last great dumpster treasures were last summer when I was working round a bike shop, I scavenged lots of used / broken but salvageable for spare parts stuff for the future.

The most expensive find one guy I know made was a pair of high quality Genelec studio monitor speakers. Some guys were renovating a bar and evidently had no idea of the value of those things and had thrown em out with the trash. My lucky mate happened by and took em home.

[Seamus OBlimey]

My first love..

[beeline]

c2w?- I know a guy that has a full-time business (or did, haven't seen him in a while) where he would drive into NYC, trash pick, and sell the stuff in NJ and PA at flea markets. Made a small mint. I've personally seen some stuff on the streets of Manhatten that would look quite nice in my home. I would take it, but my usual mode of transportation into NYC is via NJ Transit. Can't take a couch on a train.

[compared2what?]

OMG, do not touch the upholstered furniture: Bedbugs. Not worth taking the chance.

I made a one-time exception for a Saarinen Executive armchair like this one. Except blue:



But it was broad daylight, and I examined it closely for signs of infestation first. Still. Even then I was kinda jumpy for a few weeks. It's chancey.

I'd like to work for your friend. Valuable garbage is attracted to me, historically. Not that it's any enormous feat around here, I have to admit. I'm sometimes surprised people in this neighborhood don't just put their children out on the street along with their stereos, televisions, and highly collectible mid-century modern furniture when they move. I'm poor, and it's just shocking to me what gets thrown away. I'm affronted by it, in a way.

[beeline]

Nice chair!

Heh, bedbugs, yeah. Forgot about those. I guess that's why Jesus invented DDT.

I wouldn't be too affronted by stuff that gets thrown out. I know what you mean, but I've been on the dumping end of it too, just moving from one space to another and not having the new space as large as the old space. I have one of those 'collecetor' personalities. So if I don't throw crap out I just wind up taking it from place to place. I've whittled my LP collection down from over 1000 to under 100 just by giving-away/selling. And tossed tons of furniture. It gets picked up though--not by the trashmen but by scavengers. The past few moves I've just craigslisted curb alerts. Come to think of it, the past few moves I've craigslisted curb alerts on both ends--the way in and the way out!

[Penguin]

Nice chair!

Heh, bedbugs, yeah. Forgot about those. I guess that's why Jesus invented DDT.

I wouldn't be too affronted by stuff that gets thrown out. I know what you mean, but I've been on the dumping end of it too, just moving from one space to another and not having the new space as large as the old space. I have one of those 'collecetor' personalities. So if I don't throw crap out I just wind up taking it from place to place. I've whittled my LP collection down from over 1000 to under 100 just by giving-away/selling. And tossed tons of furniture. It gets picked up though--not by the trashmen but by scavengers. The past few moves I've just craigslisted curb alerts. Come to think of it, the past few moves I've craigslisted curb alerts on both ends--the way in and the way out!

Dont you guys have recycling centers around there?
They even come to pick up your unneeded (given its in fair shape) furniture and stuff for free.

[beeline]

Dont you guys have recycling centers around there?
They even come to pick up your unneeded (given its in fair shape) furniture and stuff for free.

Not recycling centers per se, at least for furniture. We have those for glass, aaluminum, newspapers, etc.

However, at least here in Philly, there are dozens of second-hand furniture stores. And I am 100% positive that when I have put stuff out like couches or bureaus on the sidewalk a day or two ahead of trash collection, those used furniture places have picked it up.

[compared2what?]

Also: Be careful who you donate to, if you donate. And who you buy from, if you buy. There are allegations of a Danish cult called Tvind behind Planet Aid, although I've never checked them out myself, just read about them.

There's also a nation-wide business with a number of pricey retail outlets called Olde Good Things that as good as has a monopoly on close-to-landmark-quality architectural salvage, as well as furniture and home accessories. That's rather unfortunately actually a front for an outfit called the Church of Bible Understanding, aka COBU, and originally "The Forever Family," headed by a guy named Stewart Traill. I can't find a good link for them right now, for some reason. They're not very big on the actual cult front anymore, but they are seriously as bad as it gets on the hinky activities front, both in the cult and all-purpose-suspicious categories. I don't even like to think about their orphanage in Haiti. Try not to buy from them, is my advice.

[barracuda]

In the south bay town of Santa Clara, they have a once a year bonanza for junk pickers. We call it "Santa Clara Days", but it's really just a month, usually March - April, in which you can throw away anything you want and the city trucks will come by and take it. It winds up being about 50 square blocks of huge piles of discards in the middle of an extremely high-income city. Most blocks have heaps in front of every single house. There's literally so much that you can't possibly even look at it all. A lot of hard core pickers make their yearly nut from trucking out good stuff, but there's just so much - blocks and blocks of huge piles of stuff: antiques, furniture, toys, building materials, you name it - all free for the taking - that they can't get it all, not even close.

Generally speaking, if you want to fill your truck you can do so in just a few blocks. It took me several years to get past the sheer exhilaration of it and confine myself to a more focused discrimination. The last few visits I've made, I foreswore upon entering the fray to take from the largess but a single item, patiently allowing that one thing to come to me rather than to search determinedly. It's like a zen moment, when from the morass that shining star touches you on the nose and goes "ping!" Well, a zen moment of emminent materialism, I guess.

And the technique works, at least for me. The very last time I was there, I got out of my car and watched the others I'd come with frantically digging through piles of junk, and, scanning lightly the surrounding cul-de-sac, I walked forthrightly toward a wooden box I'd spotted a good half-block away resting atop a huge pile of lumber in front of one of the many Craftsman bungalows lining the street. As I drew nearer I saw that it was a traveling plein air easel and paint-box of great age and patina, which had clearly been lovingly cared for prior to the ignominity of the disard. It resembles this one, but finely brass fitted and infinitley mellowed with linseed oil and age:



It was, and is still, in perfect condition. Research on the metal maker's tag near the clasps revealed that the box was manufactured before World War Two, and on the underside was a hand drawn artist's name designed nto a sort of logo, with the owner's Montmartre street address wood-burned beneath it in case it was lost.

Inside the case in the compartment underneath the palette were six unopened tubes of oil paint in brand new condition, all cadmium red, medium.

Best find ever? No, but a memorable one, especially in the way that it seemed to find me.