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Pastimes : All Clowns Must Be Destroyed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: accountclosed who wrote (14710)	3/5/2000 8:44:00 PM
From: re3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42523

Wisdom from a Garbage God By John Hoffman, Utne Reader A self-described trash advocate, John Hoffman climbed to the top of the heap soon after publication of his book, The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving (Loompanics), in which he describes how he is able to scrounge most of the things he needs for everyday life from other people's rubbish. He developed this list to point would-be divers toward the choicest dumping grounds. Top 10 Trash Temples 1. Thy neighbor's Dumpster. All the items produced by our society eventually end up in Dumpsters. Since most Dumpster divers are looking for things to outfit their homes, other people's trash is the first place to look. Apartment complexes are best, especially places where 20 or 30 people use two or three Dumpsters. At any given moment, somebody is probably cleaning out a closet or moving. (Just before the beginning of the month is a good time to look, because that's when people usually move.) Believe it or not, you generally find more stuff from middle-class than rich people, so stick to their neighborhoods. Besides clothing,which is frequently discarded in boxes, sometimes even in dry-cleaning bags!you might turn up dishes, appliances, books, school supplies, and, of course, interesting personal documents. 2. Rude food, dude. Many of you will draw the line at eating something from the trash, but for those who want to maintain your personal "welfare as you know it," eating food daily is essential, whether or not you can actually afford it. Some good bets: -Grocery store produce is plentiful and not disgusting; one store can supply dozens of divers each year. - Bakeries throw away tons of two-day-old goodies that can be revived with a few drops of water and a quick spin through the microwave. - Fast food places keep food on the "hot rack" and then throw it out. Everybody knows that pizza parlors do this kind of thing, but just about all other fast food places do it, too. - Candy stores are a sweet deal, and stale candy is better than none at all. - Movie theaters throw away nice clean giant garbage bags of popcorn, but you can't really stay alive eating popcorn. - Regular folks throw away perfectly good food. Freezer stuff, when they're moving. Boxes and cans, never opened. After Halloween, I like to get discarded pumpkins that have never been carved (sometimes they've been Magic Markered), roast the seeds, and use the rest for pie or eating squash-style. 3. Bookstores! When paperback books do not sell, booksellers rip off the covers and send them back to the publisher. They discard coverless paperbacks by the thousands. When books are discounted down to one-fourth of their original price, they are often thrown away because booksellers would rather discard them than drop the price to 50 cents, rummage sale-style. 4. Discount stores. Cheapie stores throw away lots of nice clean boxes, so they're a good place to go when you really are just looking for boxes. But in their Dumpsters you can also find all kinds of slightly imperfect household goodies. 5. Toy and novelty stores. My mother used to say that the difference between new toys and old broken toys is about 48 hours. Toys, like baby clothes, are obscenely expensive. But even little cars that "won't go no more" are still fun in the sand pile. 6. College neighborhoods. College kids are wasteful and, as you might have guessed, one of the best times to dive for their discards is at the end of a semester, especially in the spring. And colleges themselves have lots of interesting facilities; kitchens, libraries, academic officeswhere you can locate all kinds of good stuff. Good things to be found on campus: bookslots of books. Everywhere you go on a campus there are discarded books, books, books. And nowadays, softwarelots of software.