End of the Year Finds

Whether on account of holiday preparations, or the influx of new, yuletide trash pickings are typically the year's best.

Note penned in 1926; amidst personal effects in a dresser drawer.

Mission style rocker with missing, damaged leg bottom and rail.  Ebonized finish.

The rubbish de resistance: luscious, early '20's, china foot bath with rolled rim.  Perfect for tootsies, or toddlers.

Things I Found in September 2009

The good pickins are slimmer of late, surely in part because I've less time, less will to scale the mighty dumpsters, inspect the curb side rubbish, or traffic the forlorn alleys.  

Wiffle ball bat, found in Inglewood.  Handy for impersonations of Al Kaline or Jimmy Rollins.

The margins in my dayplanner are lined with suspension addled 

scrawl, sightings--seldom requited--like, 'pocket door on 36th', or 'demolition near Hooper'.

Painting found in Jefferson Park.  Most of the discarded paintings I find are small still lifes.  In recent years a growing number of exhibits have considered the art of the "intuitive", "outsider", "found", or "anonymous," including even the ephemera unearthings of Chicago based Found Magazine.

Sometimes the ferocity of the demo demands vigilance, common as investors seek to reduce carrying costs with quick turnarounds that favor the installation of new over the rehab of old.

Pivoting, 24", three piece, turn of the century towel bar, rescued (and subsequently re-plated) from front yard debris in East Adams.  Probably the single best hardware find of my recogedor career.

Things I Found in June

Yellow subway tile, from a bathroom demolition in Angelus Vista.

Change.  There's lots of change on the streets, pennies everywhere.  I keep the loot in the cup holder of my truck, for parking meters, or tacos.

Photographs are sometimes left in abandoned, or foreclosed, housing.  If the images have a sense of place, and just a touch of hoariness, I give them a home between the pages of a dusty tome, a bookmark in waiting. 

Things I Found in September

Two CD's near the corner of 30th ST. and Arlington. A Trip Back to the 80's Rare Modern Rock, and Teena Marie 14 Greatest Hits.

The Teena Marie disc may actually find its way into my meager music collection. I used to own her first record, produced by Rick James, "Wild and Peaceful."

Judging by what I hear in retail environments and what I see loaded onto my client's i-phones, Eighties pop music is really celebrated now. I'll probably slip the Rare Modern Rock disc into a mail slot. Any takers? Featured artists include: When in Rome, Dominatrix, Alphaville, and Dead or Alive.

Tub fixture. Hot water spigot only, outgoing garbage from a house in Wilshire Vista.

One dollar bill, on Westlake in Pico Union. I find change everywhere I go, darkened pennies, a nickel, sometimes Mexican coins, usually the small denominations. Paper money, not so often.

Once I drew the ire of an aggressive pan-handler when I flipped a penny--that lay a short distance away--into his collection vessel. I suppose he judged my gesture as belittling, rather than sympathetic. There are so many ways to offend.

Things I Found in January

Lots of vintage subway tile. I scooped up the busted pieces too, in the hopes I can cut to a common size. A ton of scraping and chiseling awaits. Most will need to soak in muriatic acid to dissolve the cement bond.

These tile are more dimensionally perfect (even edge to edge) than tile that is extruded (when wet clay is forced through a mold) and cut into shape before firing, which is how the vast majority of contemporary subway tile is manufactured.

Really I didn't find these so much as another real estate agent offered me access to her demo debris. "They weren't perfect," she allowed sheepishly, and with great awareness of the vapors rising from my nearly shaved scalp. "There were a few cracks in the floor and missing towel bars had left some holes", she continued without distraction as firefighters arrived to douse my cabeza.

People and their perfection. One dodo chucked every door in his 6,000 sq ft. 1880's Edwardian. "They couldn't be made perfect", he explained. "Is imperfection so bad," I responded, "you'll have a few liver spots too at 120 years of age."

Another client, loathed a massive, original, mammary-shaped living room light fixture. Commendably, he removed the light, packed it securely in his basement, and passed it along to the next owner to re-install. Bravo!

Trading Vintage Plumbing

When John offered up this vitreous monster, a pillbox tank with a bead and reel-like design, the trading got heavy. I countered with a splendid deco tank, plus a 20's wall mount sink with fab backsplash. Other pieces emerged.

It was great, all that talk about vintage plumbing, the Trenton mills, and early sanitary engineering. John and I completely lost track of time, it got dark, and finally our spouses intervened. They seemed sore. 'What up with that'?

Things I Found in September

1. Five dollar bill. In the gutter of 37th St. near Maple. The bill was folded in half, submerged in black water. Spread on the dash, it was dry before I crossed Figueroa. I'll wash my hands anytime for $5.

2. Chair. Mahogany mission-style desk chair. Left behind by renters on 31st St near Arlington. Departing residents discourteously topped the parkway with abandoned dreck. Black collection containers, early to the curb, were over-stuffed with clothing and plastic organization aids. Other furniture included a broken headboard crowded with Disney characters.

3. 1930's - 40's alarm clock. On Arbor Vitae, near Van Ness. Doesn't seem to work, though I haven't opened it up. Anybody want it?

Things I Found in August

Fine 1920's toilet bowl. Found on Van Ness near 73rd St. There's nothing I enjoy finding more than early bath fixtures.





T-Neck 45. Isley Brothers. Found on Cambridge. The Isley Brothers have to be one of the eleven greatest bands ever: Earth, Wind, and Fire, Led Zepplin, The Isley Brothers, the Kinks, James Brown and the Fabulous Flames, Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Cream, Booker T and the MG's, the English Beat, Funkadelic/Parliment, and the Small Faces. Something like that. Bill Haley & his Comets?

Calvin Klein neck tie. Found on Westmoreland Boulevard. Subsequently dry cleaned for 2 bucks.






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Sunday's Open: 2361 W. 20th St. 2 - 5:30 pm.
This property will not be open next Sunday, September 9th, regardless of availability, on account of the Western Heights home tour (which I'll promote later this week). So come see it now!

photo left: one of two very large bedrooms. The property claims a total of three bedrooms and a den.

Things I Found in March and April

I often find tools. The hammer and screwdrivers were scattered about, at the intersection of Hoover and Jefferson. I resisted laziness, scrambling from the car whilst stopped in the left-hand turn lane.




I'm keeping the screwdrivers in the pickup--for what else--salvage opportunities.







Front door hardware.




Art nouveau influenced. Found near Washington and 4th.
Douglas Company bowl. Found near LaFayette Park Place. The Douglas motto was "cheapest is best".

There's nothing I'd rather salvage than plumbing. Maybe lighting, which I almost never find, chiefly because most fixtures fit quite easily into the black collection can.

If only the city would switch to clear plastic refuse containers!

School Site

A few images from my look-see around the next LAUSD school site, on Washington Blvd. at 2nd & 3rd. A group from WAHA (West Adams Heritage Association) was permitted to visit the upcoming demolition site, and earmark potentially re-usable house parts/building elements. The group was led by the godfather of Harvard Heights Eric Bronson, but also included WAHA president Jefferson Davis, and preservation contractor Steve Pallrand.

This marvelous "bungalette" will likely face the bulldozer. I like its flared or peaked (sometimes also referred to as Oriental) roof lines.

I found these photographs inside the bungalette. Who are these people, and why were their likenesses abandoned? What else has been abandoned? Feelings? Relationships? A connection to the past.

I don't like to find photographs inside doomed buildings, I like even less finding stuffed animals. For a time, I kept some discarded teddys, including a four-foot tall powder-blue bruin, in my garage. Finally I cleaned the lot and donated them to a fire-fighter charity.

Most of the windows in the condemned buildings were boarded up, primarily to deter the entry of homeless persons. The electricity was off as well, and we had to conduct our inspections with flashlights.

Despite these and other measures, the homeless were still able to gain entry. The items they needed for day-to-day life were strewn about: canned food, blankets, clothing, a bible.

At one location mail was left behind, a post or two appeared personal.


Over-ripe fruit littered one yard with a hen house and rabbit pen.









Sometimes articles aren't even considered valuable enough to cart away. A playground horsey left behind in a bungalow court.



On an unrelated note, I'll be holding 1522 S. Hobart Blvd. open tomorrow (Tuesday) from 11 to 2:30 pm. Come by and take a look!

Things I Found in February

What's better than finding stuff? (I guess having a lot of money to buy whatever, whenever one likes.) As I was saying, what's better than finding stuff?


Flag holder, picked from atop a dumpster on 24th near Vermont.



Maybe I shouldn't show off my found wares. Will others be inspired to salvage? Will I face more competition for choice cast-offs? Wouldn't I rather face more competition? I'd be a relief really, to drive by a stack of splintered wood and think, Jack and Joan'll see to that rubbish, and if they don't there's always Marty and Mort.








Pedestal sink. Placed at the curb near Venice & La Brea, along with the oft-discarded aquarium, a built-in tub, and drywall scraps.




Door hardware. Removed from discarded doors on Jefferson near St. Andrews. (Awaiting a tri-sodium phosphate bath.)

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.

Res Derelictae

Am I a "gleaner", recovering the harvests' fallen fruit? Or merely interested in anti-consumerist statements? Influenced by the beauty of works by Millais, Van Gogh, or Varda? Or just strangely taken by outlaw expression, guilty of idiosyncratic indulgence?

Either way, the used plumbing collection grows.



Look at this score! Driving through Koreatown, good stuff put to the curb.

A Trenton Potteries tank, gloriously thick and over-sized, with an undermount flush mechanism. Even the beefy lid was intact, dated 12 08 10! (I know what you're thinking--that it's actually a Crane. But Crane didn't acquire a controlling interest in Trenton Potteries until 1927.)





Trenton New Jersey was, incidentally, for many years the ceramics capital of the country, with some 50 studios, producing 80% of the nation's sanitary ware.



I'm having a t-shirt made, to read: I Buy Used Plumbing! Which I'll wear to swap meets and antique fairs, on house tours and long bicycle rides. It's got to be easier than heading off the scrap metal collectors, bartering for cast iron tubs, and pleading with simpleton retrofitters.

Anybody know where I can find the matching bowl?