By Steve Levandoski
For those of you who spent all their money on booze and rent, and like me, don't have cable, there is a new salvation for a Saturday night. You, yes, you can be the Indiana Jones of free worthless shit, all for the price of half a tank of gas. It combines all of my favorite activities - breaking and entering, stealing, climbing into stuff, smelling bad things, shopping for junk, running from the police, and best of all it is "I'll-give-you-a-warning" illegal, instead of "go-directly-to-jail" illegal. Fuck yeah, I'm talking about dumpster diving.
Here's the breakdown.
Step 1. What do I want?
If you want cookies, go to a cookie factory. They
throw out huge case loads of cookies that are factoy
sealed and safe that will expire before they reach the
stores. The cookies are still good for a couple weeks.
If you want electronics go to Radio shack. Sometimes
they throw away TVs, VCRs or DVD players that they
can't sell because of scratches or dents, that still
operate perfectly. I had a friend pawn a dumpster TV
for $300. Goodwills and Salvation Armies also rule
because they throw away furniture they think is too
tacky to sell, but looks great in my apartment.
Step 2. Preparation.
You will need old clothes, gloves, boots, a flash
light, and a vehicle. Never carry anything on you that
you don't want Officer Friendly to see if you get
caught.
Step 3. Casing the joint.
Make sure that the place closed and everyone has
left for the day. If there is mall security, figure
out the break times and shift changes before striking.
Step 4. Get your dive on.
Hop right in and start picking out the goodies.
I've known people to score everything from tools, to
games, video games, guns (I'm not kidding) truck loads
of books, computers, lamps, paintings, diaries, and
other stuff to numerous to mention.
Step 5. Avoiding the man.
Chances are you will only be confronted with the
store manager who will threaten to call the cops. On
the odd chance you do get busted by the fuzz, they
will just laugh and tell you to beat it. It is
annoying though, so try to limit each strike to under
half an hour, and don't hit the same site more than
once every other week.
Step 6. Ettiquete.
The first person to find something owns it. Periode.
All trades are finale. And if you come across a
fellow dumpster diver and don't share hot leads on
cool sites, you're a dick. Also stick to the suburbs -
in the city you could be jumping into someones home.
Acnowlegdments.
I have to give props to my friend Ryan who has
amassed an entire storage space full of dumpster
finds. I also have to credit my friend Dan for going
as far as looking in the divorce columns of newspapers
and finding the address of some bitch who just threw
away all of some poor shmoo's belongings, beating the
garbage man every time. He is truly the king of
dumpster diving. For more information on dumpster
diving, go to Google groups and look up Alt.dumpster
Don't miss Steve's regular columns: Steve's Not Having It and Guide to Shitjobs.