Things I Found in January

I'm pretty choosy about what I pick up, but I suppose that's laughable because most people would never deign to salvage discarded building materials or consumer items.



Wool Meroni sweater (found along Frederick Street in San Francisco)




Typically I come onto things driving to and fro. In those moments, the internal monologue sounds something like this: where am I going, do I have an extra second, am I wearing clothes that can be machine washed?



Two leaded glass transoms (found near 51st St. and Main)



Sometimes like The Pile, it's a gut check. Might it depress me? More vintage house parts, bound for Sunshine Canyon or Palmdale, the wealth of a small nation heaped atop clay liners and polythylene sheeting.


New York Times Magazine from 1994, with story by H.D. Bissinger entitled, When Whites Flee (Allston & King, Berkeley)

Recycling, sure it's good. I especially like to see the recojedores piling curb-side metal onto their over-burdened flat-beds, hot water heaters cresting sidewalls, like torpedos shorn from a mothballed sub.



Kitchen grain bins (2nd Avenue near Jefferson)





In wealthy neighborhoods, like Hancock Park, the front and side yard is never used as a dumping ground, nor are items left along the parkway or curb. RV-sized dumpsters, the high status alternative, checker the landscape, hunkered down beneath porte cocheres, invading long, divided driveways.

Those darn rich people. They won't even let me get after their trash.