So apparently here it is totally kosher to put your junk out on the curb well before garbage day. Not usually the actual garbage bins, but an old armchair, a TV from three decades ago, random household crap - it’s all good! And apparently the Garbage Collector People actually take it away! In SK you’d have to haul that stuff to the dump yourself and pay a fee to dispose of it. Or break said armchair (or, say, hundreds of pounds of concrete removed from your foundation to make 4 new windows in the basement) into many small pieces and distribute among back alley garbage bins. Whatever.
Today we were chilling out on the front step and enjoying a little sweet wireless lovin’ (our internet is STILL off. Thanks a lot Bell. You’ve now been “not interrupting” our service for 3 days.) our neighbour brought out none other than: an armchair, an old PC monitor and an iMac circa 1997. We kind of laughed at the old iMac and noticed how far they’ve come in ten years. And not one minute later a half tonne truck comes cruising down the street, passes our neighbour’s house, stops, and backs up to the treasures on the side of the road. The guy leans out of his open truck window with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and checks out the merchandise. Next thing we know he hops out of the cab, picks up the iMac (blue, if you were wondering), tosses it in the back of his truck and takes off!
I almost couldn’t believe it had just happened! I know lots of people enjoy the occasional “dumpster dive” but I would have been a little embarrassed to pull over my vehicle and do it right in front of an audience! Wow. It was a good laugh, anyway. I’d like to see that guy trying to fire up the old iMac. I think that would also be a good source of comedy.
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December 31st, 1969 at 4:00 pm
June 29th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I think Saskatchewaners are really missing out when it comes to curb treasures. Although the garbage truck won’t take large items here in Montreal, people put their furniture and old items on the curb where every once-in-a-while a front-end loader and dumptruck roam the streets to take it all away. The stuff usually disappears within an hour though at the hands of neighbours. People upgrade their furniture and put the old stuff outside for someone to find. We did some spring cleaning this year and put out two old end tables, an enormous dresser, a crappy rusty magazine rack, a wooden thing (who knows what it was used for originally), come computer accessories, and two outdoor chairs, all of which disappeared by the end of the day. We actually saw a couple walking down the street with the chairs, and we spotted them on a second floor balcony just a few days ago. It’s a favorite past-time for many people to roam the streets on the 1st of each month (moving day) looking for goodies/rejects. Dom actually found an antique chair which is valued online (same company/style) at about $5000! I guess there’s a big difference between finding an antique and finding a 10-year old computer, however. I would have thought the armchair would go before the old imac. Funny.
I guess if there’s no curb-side pickup in Saskatchewan, then no one has the opportunity to find their ‘treasure’ in another man’s trash. So many subtle cultural differences. I’m really enjoying all your observations.
July 3rd, 2007 at 10:12 am
Hey don’t laugh to hard at the old blue iMac. A guy at our work still uses one..for real…its a blue iMac. Crazy eh? I woulda snagged it to if I could.
Daryl Grunau