Dumpster diving

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Classic or Dud what is the best thing you have found.

― anthony, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I've only been dumpster diving once, and it was, specifically, trashing, not dumpster diving. We found information, which is what trashing is for. It wasn't all that great though.

― Josh, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I found some disgarded plastic wrappers. And oh yes, shattered dreams.

― Sterling Clover, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

uh umm...clothes, TV sets, records, tools, paint, weird chemicals that I dunno what they are, furniture, books (once found a copy of Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night")(but that was in a household wheelie bin not a dumpster), toys...oh you name it, all fuckin kindsa stuff.

― duane, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

5 hardboard display panels featuring the history of tramways in britain. Most of the furniture in the last house I rented looked like it belonged in the skip.

― Ed, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

In Shoreditch circa '93/94 it was possible to find bathtubs with 'feet', Eames office furniture, and lots of printers' stuff. I also used to live in Hampstead (rich, tweeish part of London where Peter O'Toole lives and Glenda Jackson represents as an MP) and on certain nights people would put out the most amazing selection of unwanted but often highly retro-desirable furniture. My former housemate Esther has a very nicely furnished flat consisting almost exclusively of Hampstead castoffs. I have in my flat a set of matching turquoise chairs that were left in a Soho alleyway which I managed to squeeze into a black cab and spirit home. So hooray for skip diving.

― suzy, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I love that . I got this plush wool area rug today. It is incredibly thick, a lovely rose color , with a border of white orchids. I get furniture,books,clothes, electronics,porn. Its all good.

― anthony, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

When I was at nursery school one of the teachers found a typewriter in a skip and gave it to me with a screwdriver and I spent many a happy afternoon taking it to pieces.

― Ed, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

A whole stereo with CD player and speakers. No shit. I live in a yuppifying area and you would not believe the stuff people will get rid of. Lots of shelves & couches. A brand new futon with a frame. When I want new furniture or shelves I just walk up and down the alleys - especially at the beginning or end of a month, when people are moving out.

― Kerry Keane, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Last Monday while taking some greass cuttings away. Picked up Good Housekeeping cook book, The pasta Bible, Noel Cowards Diaries (which I'm now reading up to 1952 - he thought the Beatles were vulgar - I skipped to 1964), How to Draw! Eddie Izzard Dressed to kill, Kenneth Williams letters and Tim Lott's Scent of roses. Should keep me going for a couple weeks at least. Presumably disposed by some gay gastronaut.

― Billy Dods, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I tend to get things directly handed off to me, like a reasonable couch set. But the best incident of an actual dive involved my rather drunk friends Beau and Dave at UCLA trying to wrestle a cheesy painting the library had thrown out back to the apartment -- I watched as their sober guide. Alas, the campus police happened to encounter us.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Not strictly dumpster diving but:

My mum lives on the isle of man and they have the most fantastic junk auctions on the island. There are lots of rich old people on the Island who die and their sprogs auction off the gear, it normally goes at such low prices. Some highlights have been a mighty whirlitzer home organ for a fiver, a piano for a tenner, the sort of firniture that gets sold in notting hill gate for a small fortune and other stuff I can't remember.

― Ed, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Hampstead is king for dumpster diving. I usually couldn't carry the large objects, but I would find the most amazing profusion of books. Tooting doesn't have anywhere nearly as interesting trash. Ah, you need the Weblenesque conspicuous consumption of the Leisure Classes to get really useful and good things.

Back in the States, we furnished an entire flat with things we had found in the trash (except for the bed, I couldn't quite get my head around sleeping on trash, that was where I drew the line) - carpets, bookshelves, desks, etc. The neighbourhood where my mum lives is quite posh. Once a year, they have "trash night" when the garbagemen will pick up absolutely *anything* no questions asked, no matter how big or small. Me and my mate used to drive around with a station wagon and pick stuff out. I actually got a full on hairdressers chair with a hood (non-functional) which I was going to take home and make into a "brain transmogrifyer" but my mum banished it to the barn on account of its purple and green paisley upholstery being "an eyesore". Sigh.

― masonic boom, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I once found a badge which said 'I Love Milkshakes' and had a picture of a chocolate shake, a strawberry shake and a Banana shake.

― Jonnie, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have never found anything except firewood, however, a fellow in the north east found 2 EMS VCS3 synthesisers in a skip (= uk dumpster) outside a - er - north east higher education establishment that was being refurbished. They were battered, but he managed to make 1 good one out of the two. This was, like, 9-10 yrs ago. It still makes me sick.

x0x0

― Norman Fay, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I found a 1935 copy of scouting for boys (the scout handbook), the section on "personal hygiene" is one of the funniest things I've ever read.

― cabbage, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

A rackmount Yamaha guitar effects unit with no damage, which was in a skip in Brighton. It's been my home-studio's only unit for about 3 years.

Does anyone wander around festival sites on Monday morning, looking for free stuff left behind by departing campers? You always find alcohol - unopened cans. My friend Jasper used to collect half-drunk cans and bottles, pouring these various dregs into the biggest plastic bottle he could find. He'd then drink the concoction on the train home and see if he could avoid throwing up before Winchester.

― chris, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

This site should be renamed Tramps Love Everything. Next thing you will all be discussing the best meal you ever retrieved from a dustbin.

― Emma, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Oh go on Cabbage, I've taken the bate. Quote Baden-Powell's finest for us all!

― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have the 1956 US version and the clothing chapters are amusing.

― anthony, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I once found a dead cat

― Mike Hanley, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Eating things from the floor -- classic or dud?

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

If not sticky the ten second rule applies

― anthony, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

What is the 10-second rule ?

― Patrick, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

If it is on the floor for less then ten seconds it is edible .
Collaries (sp)
If the food is sticky
If the food is sticky .

― anthony, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I would eat food I had dropped on the floor but not food someone else had dropped on the floor. There is an important distinction.

Also I would not eat anything dropped on the floor outside (unless it was, say, a barbecue and I was drunk).

― Emma, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have eaten a lolly I dropped in a NYC gutter. I was very drunk. Actually, that sounds disgusting no matter which way you infer it.

― masonic boom, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Everyone knows that alcohol kills 95% of all known germs dead, making it safe to eat food from the floor when drunk.

― Emma, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The pride and joy of our college dorm room was the Suspect Chair that Smelled Like Poo. Every day we would douse it with Lysol. Every day it would scoff at us and exude a new, horrifying odor. When the end of the school year came around, we left it in a pile of trash with tears in our eyes (it was a really hot day and the thing was ponging as hard as it could; I think it sensed that this was its last chance to give us an airborne infection). No furniture I've owned since then has had the character of The Chair.

― Dan Perry, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

one year passes...

This thread has gone down the dumpster.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 24 April 2003 23:10 (twenty-one years ago) link

ten years pass...

FFS. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/28/three-charged-vagrancy-act-food-skip-iceland

― Chewshabadoo, Tuesday, 28 January 2014 21:37 (eleven years ago) link

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