Great dumpster finds

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Yesterday, walking past a large bin (trash can for Americans) at work, something shiny caught my magpie-like eye. I turned back to take a closer look and found that it was one of those pre-hologram, 3D moving pictures (you know the kind, sort of ridgy and made of hard platic and when you turn them in different directions the picture moves) of the kind you often used to get for free in cereal packets. Only thing was that this one was BIG - about 12"x10" picturing Kiss standing agaisnt a backdrop of flames in full stage make-up, their logo flashing away behind them. It is now the focal point of my new apartment's bathroom. I have found several other things in dumpsters, like a really nice table and a fully working video recorder when I was a student, but that was some time ago and this is easily the best discovery ever. Anyone else ever go Womble and make good use of the things that they find, things that the everyday folks leave behind?

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:04 (twenty years ago) link

What is Dumpster and can I meet cute girls there?

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:09 (twenty years ago) link

It's where you go to get rid of the people you met on Friendster.

― Cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:10 (twenty years ago) link

Wombles! Wombles! Come on you Dons!

(sorry)

― Mark C (Mark C), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:10 (twenty years ago) link

I often go dumpster diving for food, since it saves your money and is ecological too. Most shops throw away loads of perfectly good foodstuff every day, just because the "best before" date has expired, which doesn't mean there's something wrong with the food. Fresh bread is easily obtained this way, since shops keep freshly baked bread on their counters for one day only, and then throw away everything that hasn't been sold that day.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:15 (twenty years ago) link

a dumpster is a skip, for english people. i was just trying to be internationalist here so's everyone would understand - guess that failed. like coz's idea, though it does make him sound like a serial killer...

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:19 (twenty years ago) link

go Womble, go Womble....

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:47 (twenty years ago) link

the signs on the sides of skips say

LEVEL LOADS ONLY - which no-one ever takes any notice of

and

NO FIRES

which seems rather unnecessary. What kind of mentalist sets one on fire?!

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:51 (twenty years ago) link

...but no, I've never found anything I wanted in one.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:51 (twenty years ago) link

oh I'm so glad I found *this*!

http://www.h-lame.com/images/battleskip.jpg

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 09:53 (twenty years ago) link

pre-hologram, 3D moving pictures = Lenticular Image

― Simeon (Simeon), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 11:12 (twenty years ago) link

geezer! i was wondering what they were called

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 11:13 (twenty years ago) link

Pleasure - it's one of my favourite words!

― Simeon (Simeon), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 11:20 (twenty years ago) link

I found a Magnus chord organ in the dumpster behind the place my band rehearses. It's all scratchy and grimy sounding, and two of the "G" keys don't work, but it's totally one of my favorite of all my musical instruments.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 12:15 (twenty years ago) link

i found a large book bound with nice wooden boards. inside was a collection of newspapers from a small town formed solely to manufacture military goods for the world wars, which is clearly documented inside... along with other small-town style articles.

its now part of the university library. wooo!

― petite verte (petite verte), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 13:36 (twenty years ago) link

Some left a bunch of furniture out for the trash last week, so I took a chair.

― rosemary (rosemary), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 13:46 (twenty years ago) link

we had a couple of fridges from skips during our student days, worked perfectly well :)

― CarsmileSteve (CarsmileSteve), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 13:50 (twenty years ago) link

hehe nice

― Kevin Burns (thugbot), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 14:02 (twenty years ago) link

i get bread from dumpsterz

― thugbot (thugbot), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 14:03 (twenty years ago) link

When I was 9 my dad once found this really fantastic thing in a skip/dumpster outside his place of work - a kind of personal movie display unit, which appeared to have been used for personal educational puposes. It had an old training film inside, very much like the sort of stuff you see in the Prelinger Archive, only English. I think it dated from the early 70's, judging from the fashions of the people in it, and it was all about British Steel.

The way it worked was fabulous - the film came in a big see-through plastic cartridge, and you shoved it into the bottom slot of this thing. The unit itself was designed to be carried around like a suitcase, and when you need to use it you put it down somehwere and sort of folded the screen out. You could see the projector's guts if you wished and it projected the image upwards, which was bounced off a mirror behind the screen. It was the neatest A/V-type thing I'd ever seen, but we never did find any more cartridge films for it and it broke down after several years.

― Chriddof (Chriddof), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 15:42 (twenty years ago) link

Wow! Why don't I ever stumble across interesting things like that?

― C J (C J), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 16:42 (twenty years ago) link

I have a boxfull of those super-8 film cartridges from a nursing school program that I got in a city hall dump-all-our-junk sale. I've had 'em easily 15 years now but never played them because I don't have the player. I was going to break the film out of the cartridges and assemble some kind of found-footage masterpiece but never got around to it.

― nickn (nickn), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 21:59 (twenty years ago) link

All I've ever found is firewood. Someone I know found home made porn on video. Someone else found 2 ems vcs3 synthesisers. Me, firewood. Gah.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 22:01 (twenty years ago) link

I also got about 20 LPs from the trash can after our local swap meet ended, I think they were kired of lugging them home every month. Dave Brubeck and classical, mostly. Getting food from a dumpster squicks me, tho I would have no problem eating something "expired" just before it hits the can.

― nickn (nickn), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 22:05 (twenty years ago) link

nickn, you should be able to find a super-8 movie viewer cheap from charity shop/thrift store or suchlike?

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 1 July 2003 22:06 (twenty years ago) link

Oh I have a projector, just not one that's made for those cartridges. It would be a lot of work to break them out and put them on ordinary reels, so I don't bother. My enthusiasm for making something out of them has long since waned.

― nickn (nickn), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 00:45 (twenty years ago) link

I found redemption in a trash can. It was only half eaten.

― Mike Hanle y (mike), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 01:02 (twenty years ago) link

Getting food from a dumpster squicks me, tho I would have no problem eating something "expired" just before it hits the can.

It's not as bad as one thinks. If the foodstuff is really mashed up/dirty/wet, I won't take it, but most of the time the food is in quite good condition. For example, all bio-waste must be put into specail bins, so it's not hard to find thrash bins full of nothing but bread.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 08:30 (twenty years ago) link

One time some friends and i stopped at a strip mall sandwich shop for a bite. The girl making our sandwiches asked if we liked movies and when we replied in the affirmative she told us to go behind the building, as the Blockbuster Video next door had dumped a sh*tload of VHS films in their (Blockbuster's) dumpster. We ended up climbing around in MOUNDS of tapes still in their cases and each one of us fished out around a trashbag full of tapes each. I got a bunch of Kurosawa, Bergman and 60's - 70's European films, which was sweet.

― Jay Vee (Manon_70), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 19:30 (twenty years ago) link

A friend of mine recently moved into a warehouse. The old tenants had thrown away like, their entire highschool years in the dumpster. There was a definite progression of highschool art projects that were all GORGEOUSLY CHEESY (e.g. an exact reproduction of the Red Hot Chili Pepper's "Mother's Milk" album cover)... my friend hung up all the paintings.

― Mandee, Wednesday, 2 July 2003 19:41 (twenty years ago) link

That reminds me; I found an oil-painting of Jimi Hendrix in the dumpster behind my work like 6 years ago. It had one itty bitty tear in the top left corner of the canvas. It was really neat and had Jimi's face and guitar sorta fading to beautiful hippie rainbows and shit. I gave it to my buddy Ben who worshipped some Hendrix. I miss it now.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 19:46 (twenty years ago) link

My folks live in Spain and have furnished virtually their whole rented apartment with stuff that people have dumped - tables, chairs, a futon, lamps...I think a lot of expats just rent apartments over the winter then, when they leave, dump their stuff as it's cheaper than carting it back home with them or putting it in storage. And my mum seems to be a bit of an expert on finding it.

― ailsa (ailsa), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 19:55 (twenty years ago) link

one year passes...

revive

awesome thread

― -rainbow bum- (-rainbow bum-), Saturday, 19 March 2005 07:11 (nineteen years ago) link

Various chairs and sofas. The best was this green vynil.. THING... that weight nine thousand pounds and rolled out into a bed. It was the ugliest, best sofa ever. I didn't want it in my room, though.

― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Saturday, 19 March 2005 08:03 (nineteen years ago) link

apparently there is great terra cotta moulds of turn of the century decorative ornaments in a dumpster outside of the flatiron building in manhattan.

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 19 March 2005 08:14 (nineteen years ago) link

Shortly after I moved into my second apartment, I was downstairs taking out the trash when I spotted a stack of records. I reached in and this is what I pwned:

all promo LPs, number of items in parentheses:

Jurassic 5 - Power In Numbers (5)
2Pac - Until the End of Time (think that's the right title) (3)
8 Mile soundtrack (4)
5 Eminem 12" singles
5 2Pac 12" singles
3 J5 12" singles

I immediately took them to Amoeba and received a fair amount in credit. I'd look in the dumpster every few days thereafter but never saw another LP.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Saturday, 19 March 2005 08:30 (nineteen years ago) link

Jurassic 5 - Power In Numbers (5)

Someone's got taste...

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Saturday, 19 March 2005 11:37 (nineteen years ago) link

We feed homeless people out of the big commercial bakery dumpster. Nothing wrong with the bread. Even get some fancy turkish stuff every once in a while.

― kate/thank you friendly cloud (papa november), Saturday, 19 March 2005 12:11 (nineteen years ago) link

I haven't gone scavenging regularly in a while- house is packed. 2 trips this month yielded: 200 brand new books in sealed crates, $800 cash resale value (I deal books). Dozens of gallons of juice, fruity drink, and some 12packs of coke. Several hundred individually wrapped cookies, and several hundred tubes of toothpaste, in sealed cases. Nearby homeless & friends got everything I couldn't use.

― -rainbow bum- (-rainbow bum-), Saturday, 19 March 2005 21:53 (nineteen years ago) link

four months pass...

I'm reviving this thread (again) because I had a fruitful week at the dumpster (skip?).

Here's what I found:
*a suitcase full of shoes. women's 1950s-1960s high heeled shoes. clean, wearable, in my size. i salvaged three pairs. two of them have dainty bows on the toes. i've already worn two of them.

*a hanging lamp in the shape of a pilgrim hat. orange plastic. working.

ok. that's it.

― The Milkmaid (of Human Kindness) (The Milkmaid), Thursday, 21 July 2005 13:03 (eighteen years ago) link

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