WACK-a-Pedia!

It's been a while since I thought about dumpster diving, thrifting and other once-edgy ways for urban post-collegians to acquire stuff that's almost good enough to keep. Funny how some early-'90s "alternative" phenomena just didn't have the crossover potential that others did. (Amazon doesn't even sell Pagan Kennedy's Living: A Handbook For Maturing Hipsters direct anymore, can you believe it?)

Of course, the practice continues sans buzz, particularly in my apartment. I only recently abandoned all hope of "fixing up" a dresser (missing a drawer, painted yellow and adorned with photo-stickers of baby seals). You want it? Last call!

Thanks to the curators of Librarian Avengers and Kuro5hin, I was inspired to explore Wikipedia's wisdom on the subject:

-Dumpstering can be ... a conscious lifestyle choice as a part of freeganism.

-Popular [make that "popular"] rap/rock group Pseudohoodlum had a song called "Dumpster Dive." Lyrics included: "Jump right off the vintage scale, I know a place where there's always a sale... in the dumpster." [Shades of Petula Clark!]

-There is a woman out there who refers to herself as "The Dumpster Lady."

-Wikipedia's article on the topic is deemed by those in the know to be "rather non-encyclopedic" because it's "chummy and instructive ... not really what Wikipedia is about."

It's not? Are you sure?



**The pic is from fellow Chicagoan Kelly Noah's site No Cost for Culture. Cool shot, Kelly!