Originally published at: The pandemic is producing a golden age of stooping | Boing Boing
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I remember fretting about getting rid of a futon I didn’t need anymore when I first moved to Manhattan, wondering if I’d have to pay someone to cart it away. A new friend said, “don’t worry about it, I’ll help you bring it down to the curb and we’ll just leave it there.” I was still hesitant, imagining it moldering out in front of the building for months as a guilt-inducing monument to my thoughtlessness.
Coming downstairs again 20 minutes later to get some lunch, the futon was gone. It’s a kind of NYC magic that anything of some value that’s placed on the pavement will be spirited away to a new home within 15 minutes.
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A friend of mine came to live in Manhattan a few months ago in a large appartment building. He didn’t had money to buy furniture yet… “Don’t you worry !” told him the doorman and took him to a storage room in the basement, where they keep everything residents are throwing away before it hits the pavement… “Take what you want, it’s free !” He got better furniture than I do for free in a mater of days… just for a little bill to thank the doorman.
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golden age of stooping
I saw golden age of schtupping. It’s early, need coffee.
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Roger that!
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I’m rogering that, right now!
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And I read it yet another way, since sitting around so much in this pandemic got me stooped over like an oldster.
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Seems like a great way to decorate with bedbugs.
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Your eyes are better than mine. I read pooping. I was hesitant to click until things focused up.
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It’s always hard to get rid of literally everything before a massive move. I always end up putting quite a bit out on the curb. I figure if I’m furnishing things with large garbage collection day finds, it’s only fair I add some to the pot. Sometimes it gets nabbed by someone just walking by as I set it down.
These days I’m more likely to use the buy nothing group for handing my stuff off, but I’m still a total sucker for grabbing things off the side of the road.
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Does it come with a warranty?
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In these days of bedbugs, I’d avoid anything upholstered, but I’ve picked most of my home office desk supplies from the roadside (hanging files, paper trays, etc.), as well as stained glass windows, silver platters, a folding screen, a craft cabinet, antique picture frames, and one exquisite side chair that may be as much as 300 years old.
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All toilets aside. I have had good luck scoring curbside stuff this last year. The best find was a computer monitor. It’s a little older and the colour isn’t perfect, but it’s made my life so much better.
My favourite memory of leaving stuff out was putting out an old TV. People collected that thing in pieces. One guy took the remote. Another took the power cable. Finally, overnight, someone walked off with the TV itself. It was fun to watch it go (my office had huge windows facing the street at the time).
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Upcycling? It’s kinda brilliant, with the beer in the tank; depending on the age of the unit, it’ll be insulated, so if you have the tank lid, your beer will stay cold a good long time.
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Yes indeed.
Or maybe “circling back,” as I often hear buzz-worded these days (garbage in, garbage out, you are what you excrete, etc.).
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One of my spouse’s friends made a pretty penny by waiting until trash day to go and collect discarded electronics. He’d fix them up a bit and then resell them on eBay.
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Chicago too.
Last time I moved, I brought a handmade bookshelf down to the street around 10:00pm in a residential area. By the time I went back inside and got the matching bookshelf and brought it outside, the first one was already gone. Couldn’t have been more than 3 minutes or so.
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All discarded items have a story: “I was once homeless… for 3 hours.”
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