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[caption id="attachment_9760" align="alignnone" width="497"] Zo you dreamt your mothzer vas a trapeze artiste? Zas ist very intervestink.[/caption]

It has been said there's a fine line between art and madness but there are no fine lines in this art at all. This looks more like therapy than art to me; like someone had to get something out of their system -- fast. Nice of them to share. Click the image to enlarge.

Close but no cigar you dumb piece of steel! Well, okay, a little too close; I'd better change my password -- again. Click the image to enlarge it.

This came out of an entertaining bag of garbage -- some people in Fairview do lead colourful lives. Once I found it I thought perhaps someone had left a sort of numismatic jigsaw puzzle. But no. Click the image to enlarge.

[caption id="attachment_9163" align="alignnone" width="497"] Caped cute-saders?[/caption]

I just didn't have the time or the patience to curate the collection I ran across last night in a dumpster.

I was on my way to bed, but it's my habit -- a binner's habit -- to look for returnable containers, and other interesting discards, on my way anywhere.

So even though I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool dumpster diver I will browse.

I looked over the top of this one dumpster and into a solid layer of photo albums and holiday snaps and postcards. Right on the top of the pile were a bunch of what looked like dance school promotional photos.

The photo above was literally staring me in the face. Holy tap, jazz and interpretive crime-fighting Batman!

And if the photo above brings to mind an old 1960s TV series, so does the holiday snap below. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_9165" align="alignnone" width="497"] A horse is a horse unless that horse is a photograph.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_8716" align="alignnone" width="497"] The kindness of strangers. A warm feeling on a cold day.[/caption]

When I finally finished my breakfast and got off my butt to make some binning rounds, I couldn't help but notice that some thoughtful person(s) had given me the gift of food.

First I saw the package of salami tucked in the the back of my bike trailer. It was in a clear-plastic store bag. In the front of the trailer was another store bag containing more luncheon meat and a block of cheddar cheese. And beside the bag, bold as brass, a plastic jar of peanut butter. Thank you kind person(s). These are all excellent choices for a homeless person on the go.

All of this provender is brand new, near as I can tell -- I've yet to eat any of it -- I just put it in the fridge for later.

Meaning I just left it neatly on my bike trailer. I'm living in the fridge right now.

That's not a complaint; it's a handy fact. The food on my trailer is not in any danger of spoiling -- if peanut butter and salami can spoil. That means I can eat it when I'm hungry, and I don't have to eat it all at once. More importantly, I can hold off on the luncheon meat until I find some mustard.

Once I crack the seal on the peanut butter, I give it half-a-day -- one day tops

[caption id="attachment_7336" align="alignnone" width="497"] It was many garbage bags like this that made today half-ways profitable.[/caption]

If recycling is almost "hip" a remarkable number of people show their disdain for fashion by continuing to throw all their recyclables, including their returnable containers, in the trash. Some binners will actually argue that many of these people are doing this to be nice to "real" get-their-hands-dirty binners. Bwahaha! Who says binners can't be funny? While I believe there are some who trash their containers knowing the hardcore binners will find them, I believe more people do it to make those "lazy so-and-so's" work for their bottles. But I'm sure the majority just want to throw things away and forget about them. 

This is verging on slick, The illustration style, and modelling (shading, and such) are quite commercial. Personally, I think the effect of the face is ruined by the off-balance egg coming out of her head. But perhaps I just don't get the yolk. Click the images to enlarge them.

Here's a rather large, thick painting someone tried to toss in a Fairview dumpster yesterday. I'm at a bit of a loss to decide whether this is an abstract painting, a landscape painting, or a landscape made with paint. I'm leaning towards the latter. I think it would be more interesting to live in it, than live with it on a wall.

[caption id="attachment_6900" align="alignnone" width="497"] Tinned tuna fresh from the dumpster. Mmmm.[/caption]

Is there gold in them thar garbage bins? Yes. Both figuratively, and literally, but yesterday it wasn't gold my prospecting came up with but tin, or rather tins -- a mother lode of tinned tuna. Some apartment dweller off Hemlock tossed a very large bag into their BFI dumpster, which I happen to have a key for. The plastic bag contained about 50 large cans, sans paper label, but stamped as "TUNA" on the lid. The cans weren't bulging, or dented, or rusted. The looked to be twice the volume of a basic 120 g can of tuna found in a supermarket -- at least $200 CDN worth of food. I took about 10 tins, and left the remainder in the bag, and put the bag beside a nearby set of recycling blue bins so binners could take their pick. Of course I locked the dumpster back up.

I haven't eaten any of the tuna yet, but I've handed out four of my tins -- with the caveat that it came out of a dumpster, and one person has already gotten back to me with a review. He explained it was really good tuna; better than the stuff in stores -- pink, and oily. I pointed out that white tuna was the better stuff, and the pinker it was, the closer it was to cat food. He said the white tuna was too dry for his taste. He preferred this stuff (meow!). A satisfied customer -- I gave him another tin. I'll let you know if eating it kills me. Click the image to enlarge it.

By "we," I mean binners in general. There's a perception among my "colleagues" that I never go into dumpsters; that I won't get my hands dirty. I encourage this perception: Whatever underestimates you is probably fodder for Nietzsche's "whatever didn't kill you." While I did, once, actually find gold in a residential garbage bin, and I've found small amounts of cash, that's the exception, rather than the rule, in my experience. Mostly I find bottles, and cans; useful trinkets like flash drives, and computer hardware; fresh, clean clothing, and even fresher, edible, wholesome food. And keep in mind, I barely scratch the surface when it come to dumpsters. I just don't have the patience, and I won't consume the required chemical additives to give me that patience.

[caption id="attachment_6885" align="alignnone" width="497"] Lookit the funny goober I took a picture of.[/caption]

I think this is a make up mirror, but how can I be sure. It also has an electrical cord. It could be an old all-in-one desktop computer for all I know. Maybe it's both, a sort of "iMakeup. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_6886" align="alignnone" width="497"] This neighbourhood is nuts for cedar fences. That one in the background is brand spanking new.[/caption]

Just today, I found these two name tag labels in a paper recycling bin. You are not going to believe this but I'm almost certain I've met both of these women at several different parties over the years. What are the chances?! Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_6469" align="alignnone" width="497"] Click the image of the thieving crow to go to the site I stole it from.[/caption]

I went back out binning for returnable cans and bottles yesterday, after I blogged the crow photos, explaining how the darn crow had cost me a whole nickel -- I'd been so intent on photographing it, I hadn't noticed it was perched on a returnable juice box.

I binned straight (as the crow flies) in the direction of the construction dumpster where I'd taken the crow pics, a good seven or eight hours earlier. The one litre juice box was still there. Under it, and around it, in garbage bags, was another five or six dollars in beer bottles, and beer cans. Who knows how long some or all of that was there before I showed up in the afternoon. It was amazing that it was still there in the evening. Just a few feet from the construction dumpster there's a city blue bin set for recyclable containers, and paper, meaning many binners would've checked the blue bins through the day. Anyway, lucky me.

[caption id="attachment_6471" align="alignright" width="180"] The nickel the "crow" gave Karen. That's right. I got the juice box, and the nickel.[/caption]

And this morning, my friend Karen gave me a nickel. She told me a crow had given it to her to give to me, because -- you know -- it felt so guilty. Ha, a crow feeling guilty. As if!

Thank you Karen. Yesterday was Thanksgiving in Canada. I'm mindful of how much I have to be thankful for -- good friends, a good city, even good strangers, such as the couple who gave me a tub of stuffing with rice last night -- okay, that was a bit weird; I was sure there was going to be some turkey, but it was stuffing, all the way down. Good stuffing too. Thanks again, everyone.

[caption id="attachment_6261" align="alignnone" width="497"] Spending all your time outside in a back alley can sure age a person, let me tell you![/caption]

This painting has some eye-appeal, as the detail above shows. The deliberate cracking is a nice touch, and a bit of nudity never hurts either -- I'll just throw that out there, just like someone threw this painting out there, leaned up against an apartment dumpster.

Look at those eyes! So intelligent. If only it could speak, what might it say? Click the image above to enlarge it.

Difficult to take photos of starry night skies in a big city -- all that ambient light bouncing around. More so if you have a camera out of the dumpster with little rhinestones stuck around the lens. But, as they say, I'm trying -- very trying, so last night I saw my opportunity, and took it.

Anchors aweigh! Florida Pete found this very tasty old HP laptop, a Pavilion zt1170 -- very high in iron. I could only wonder what it would've tipped the scales at if it still had it's hard drive.. The specs were pretty good for a laptop that I thiought came out in 2002. It was old enough that, it didn't have built-in wireless, and while it had USB ports, it had no USB boot option, and I had no bootable CDs with me.

It sure had lots of ports, on the sides, the back, even one on the bottom!. The early 2000s was a time of transition, so a computer manufacturer had to cover their behind. Must have made it all the harder to make a small form factor laptop. Certainly was by the evidence at hand.

While I searched around on the Net for info on this behemoth, Pete booked out beside me and headed for Slumberland. Before I left, I woke him up. He bade me a good evening, and went back to sleep. I paused outside McDonalds to worry about the safety of his shopping cart. I left it and hoped for the best, but not before I seriously considered tying the HP Pavilion to one of the wheels. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_4701" align="alignnone" width="497"] After dark, it's all the same junk, only moodier.[/caption]

It's end-of-month, end-of-summer: Let's all move! Binners of every persuasion, enjoy pawing through what Fairview renters throw away when they move out. Dumpsters will be dived, repeatedly, and painstakingly, with every bag opened, in the search for, well... whatever. Who knows? There's all sorts of good things to find: fresh food, trinkets, even money! I'm not much for dumpster diving but even I get the whole, "you'll never know what you'll find until you look" mentality that drives experienced binners to spend hours searching all the way to the bottom of a full dumpster.

[caption id="attachment_4702" align="alignright" width="150"] Someone didn't want to take this stuff with them?[/caption]

Of course, there's another side to this. The building managers of the Fairview neighbourhood's many apartment buildings are all about tidy, well-ordered properties -- they hate the way their departing tenants shed unwieldy junk behind the buildings on their way out the door to some new apartment with all the mod cons, and wainscoting -- several of them have been quite blunt on the subject of tenants, and their trashy ways.

What gets building manager's goats isn't so much bags in the dumpster, or even cardboard boxes full of discarded items -- it's the big stuff like mattresses, and furniture, and mirrors. Mattresses are the worst; they won't fit into dumpsters, the City of Vancouver doesn't want to take them away anymore -- in fact, thanks to the possibility of bed bugs, no one wants to get within 20 feet of a discarded mattress anymore. Mirrors are a pain, because the longer they linger in an alley, the more likely that they'll end up smashed. Click the images to enlarge.

Lots of people put stuff out that they don't want any more, seemingly with the thought, or hope, that someone else might want the stuff -- you know... "one person's trash, is another person's, et cetera, et cetera. This is a good thing.. It's quite common with kid's toys -- bashed, abused, broken, sticky, kid's toys.

A binner named Jo-Jo picked this up -- he wasn't thinking it had any value, it just caught his fancy. I didn't know what it was either, but I could see it was a print, rather than original handwriting, and it looked very artful. Well, yes, it's a facsimile of "Marty's letter" from the movie Back to the Future (1985). Click the image to enlarge it.

You might say the pampering, of pooches in particular, is one of my pet peeves, so when I saw these actual knock-off Pampers-like disposable diapers for dogs, well, I was barking mad. Weird as I think it is, I get that dogs are the new children. I see the uber-expensive, nouveau dog food styled after baby food, whjich I think is just sad -- OK, except for the pepperoni sticks for dogs, which are actually tasty. I see the dog spas, and I see Fairview residents taking their dogs out for a "carry" -- heaven forfend their little paws should touch the ground, With all that, I guess, disposable diapers for dogs are inevitable. We wouldn't want them to do it like animals after all.

Two things about these dog diapers caught my attention. The care taken with the packaging to justify the existence of this product, and the fact that someone bought it, and then decided to throw it away. Click the images to enlarge them.