I'm a professional scavenger making a living selling curbside garbage. This blog details my finds and sales. It also acts as an archive for things beautiful and historic that would otherwise have been destroyed.
I didn’t find too much today. I had to work a good length shift today, and Saturday is probably the worst day for picking. It’s either after garbage day or not really close to garbage day. For these slow days, I’ll upload some pictures of things I already have around the house from days past.
I found this nice retro lamp a block or so away on Esplanade. The woman throwing things out (and there was a lot) said that it was all her mother’s, but that she “couldn’t live there anymore,” for whatever reason. This lamp has an arm broken off it, but you don’t even really notice. It gives off a warm, calming light, and is nice to read to (not that I end up doing that very much). I enjoy having it in the back corner next to my bed.
Here’s my glass owl change holder. It was produced by Gattuso, a Montreal based food company still in operation. Near the bottom is written “be wise buy Gattuso” in capital letters. I also found the Budweiser pitcher. Budweiser kind of sucks, but this one is one of those nice older heavy glass ones. The copyright on the side says 1988.
It’s a Friday, and it’s my birthday. I’m now a quarter century old. That’s not too shabby if I do say so myself. My only required task today was to bike down to Berri and Maisonnuve to renew my driver’s license for the next year. I got that done, though I had to wait a while. On the way back, I found out that it was garbage day on the other side of the Plateau, for the area east of St-Denis and North of Sherbrooke. It was a mild, sunny day, and I found some decent stuff. Let’s take a look.
Across from the building where the SAAQ office is located I saw this guy looking through this bag. I was just killing time outside, waiting for my number get a bit closer to being called, so I waited for a while for him to finish just to see what all the fuss was about. After all was said and done, I probably spent a good 5 minutes waiting. He did eventually leave, leaving a nicely tied up bag and a clean working area. I gave the bag a good kick and had no inclination to go any further. I’m not sure what he was looking for, but I think I saw him looking for cigarette butts later, so that could have been it.
Not garbage, but a kind of cool piece of art near the SAAQ. Unfortunately, it looks kind of butt ugly from every angle other than this. Maybe if there was some shrubs to mask the lower part a bit it would be pretty awesome. The city needs to hire a landscaper or a gardener for that.
This pile of stuff contained a few things that were probably alright. The only thing I took was the tea ball, which looked brand new. The rest I left in a vaguely more visible location for others to see.
This ugly Sears bowl (any wonder why they’re losing money?) and a CD of soothing baby music (as designed by Johnson and Johnson… conspiracy theorists work your magic. Subliminal messages anyone?) were part of the above pile.
Not far away, someone’s cookbook and a slide, possibly of the person who owned it? There were other personal documents here too, in plain view. Not too worried about identity theft, for one reason or another.
A box of dishes. They were nice older-style dishes, but I didn’t particularly like the pattern on them. I left them for the others. Hopefully someone took them, as they’re still pretty decent.
Grungy microwave in front of a grungy bar on St-Hubert.
I saw this around Marie-Anne and Christophe-Colomb. I liked the looks of it from the start, based on that cute little side table at the back left.
The first few things I scrounged out of the bags. I left most of this behind (especially that weird shrine-looking thing), but I kept the “do not enter” coin bank. I also kept the glass owl coin bank, which is a nice vintage piece and possibly my favorite thing I found today. I may post a better picture of that later.
At some point as I was looking through the above bag an older lady walked by and told me about another bunch of good stuff just around the corner. I was really excited by the current pile, but it was off the busy street a bit so I figured I was safe. This is some stuff I found at the place she told me about. The picture’s not great, but there’s some decent Bushnell binoculars, a Hookah pipe thing (similar to the ones I found not long ago), a pipe for smoking a certain illegal substance, and a diary, written in French. I couldn’t resist the temptation to take the diary. It looked juicy, even if I have a hard time understanding what’s written. Is it wrong to take a look around?
Some books at the same place. All of them were French.
Also from that pile: a cool little drumming thing, a trophy (mostly for a joke), and a little wooden mask.
Back to the first pile, I found a box of really old fondue (from the looks of it, it’s probably from sometime in the late 80s to early 90s; regardless, I didn’t take it). a wood trinket (“My house is clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy”), an odd ceramic thing with the shape of two spoons in it (I’m a sucker for pointless vintage ceramics), an a “Kitchen Caddy” for holding kitchen utensils and such. There were two good-looking egg beaters in it, and some other kitchen utensil I couldn’t identify.
Someone let their dogs out their backyard, and this one barked at me a bit. The guy came out and said there wasn’t anything good in the bags, but offered me a hose. I declined.
I found a nice old-ish hub cap in there too.
By the time I had gotten back to the pile, the nice side table was gone, and a couple of lamps were there in it’s place. They all looked nice, but I took the nice looking antique-y looking one in the front. I biked home with it and a backpack full of stuff. Part of the reason that’s I’m a good garbage picker is that I’m part pack-mule.
Not too far from the last pile, I found a bit more stuff. Nothing I took, but there were a few photo albums, with a focus on motorcycling and cars.
There were also some decent CDs, like “Smash” by the Offspring. CDs don’t hold too much value anymore, though, so I left them.
