Sidewalk Economy

WARNING: LONG POST

Yesterday Yummy found herself talking about what I call the Sidewalk Economy and then left it to me to expound upon. So expound I shall.

Sidewalk Economics
I should begin this explanation by admitting to being a cheap bastard. I grew up on a farm. OK, so, not so much ON a farm as near two. Both sets of Grandparents had farms that survived The Great Depression and Dust Bowl. This instilled in them certain habits that were passed to my parents as they worked the farm and that they passed to me. I.E. cheap bastardness.

The heart of The Sidewalk Economy is the sidewalk. It may count in the space that you paid for when buying your place and the city may require you to do the snow clearing, but it's really commonly accessible public space. Sure, disagree all you like, but there's a reason that you put your recycling and garbage out there. Court decisions about people rummaging around in your trash will rule for you if the trash is in your yard and for them if it's on the sidewalk.

I'm drifting a bit. I was saying that The Sidewalk Economy is based on the sidewalk. If you see something on the sidewalk with no moving truck or people indicating it's spoken for then it's yours. Similarly, you can put stuff that you no longer want but isn't trash out on the sidewalk for others to take.

Some years back I passed a guy who had grocery bags full of books. The deal was that you could take a bag for free but you had to take everything that was in the bag. I think the bag had three books that I might read. The rest were put in a cardboard box and placed outside the apartment building by the bus stop. When I came home the box was empty. About a year later I was reading outside and someone at the bus stop asked me if I was the person who put them out there and thanked me for the books.

Someone else in the building was throwing out a bench. You know, the sort of wood and metal thing people put in their yards. Look, don't ask me why he kept one in his apartment. The point here is that he let me have it and I put it on the porch in front of the apartment. I and several others made good use of it until I moved and took it with me. It now resides in my front yard.

Another neighbor redid her kitchen and put her old cabinets out on the sidewalk. I put them in my kitchen with some plywood on the top and a tablecloth. I got more storage space and counter space. When the neighbor found out where they went she was delighted.

Yummy complains about me eyeballing piles of stuff on the sidewalk, but she's gotten an old wood Coke bottle crate, a cordless drill, and another Eiffel Tower for her collection this way. Of course, I also had to get her comfortable using a drill. She did some work on a shelf we made for her office and put drainage holes in my trash can.

I had a planter made of a tire that sat up the street for a week.

I've also got a couple of bookshelves and a steamer trunk.

I routed a discarded but working window air conditioner to a local family whose own window AC had putzed out.

And, of course, when I seriously clean house there are always piles of books, VHS tapes, unwanted electronics, and whatnot that end up outside with "Free" written on the sidewalk in chalk.

With the conversion to digital TV transmissions the last week or two has had countless televisions discarded and collected all over the city. Yummy and I have seen a couple of them heading up the street by my place. Both by the same guy. I'd really like to know what he's doing with them.

Makers
These are examples of easy sidewalk commerce. Much of the stuff being thrown out is mostly good but damaged or broken but easily fixable. This is where some simple craft skills can come in handy. Typically, it's nothing too elaborate. A dab of glue, clever use of spray paint, some Febreze, and it's all good. If you have to use anything more elaborate than a Dremel tool it you might want to give it a pass.

A neighbor threw out a collapsible wood drying rack that had a broken dowel. I punched holes in business cards and placed them where they'd keep glue from gumming up where the dowel turned in the legs, glued it back together with some wood glue, and put it back out. She reclaimed it and continues to use it.

I've got an Ikea lamp that had been placed too close to a wall so the bulbs touched and burned through the paper lampshade. I picked up some decorative paper at a local craft store and swear I'm gonna get around to putting the paper back on any day. I actually lost the metal ring that goes on the bottom of the shade. Luckily, I found where someone else had thrown out a lampshade that has a metal ring that fits perfectly.

I've salvaged a computer or three from the sidewalk over the years. I got a couple of them working and gave them to kids in the neighborhood along with old software that I've been collecting over the years.

That's nothing compared to this homeless guy named Eli that I've run into a couple of times. Sharp guy. Looks like Jerry Garcia. I'm guessing he's homeless by choice. His shopping cart is full of computer parts he's collected from sidewalks. He works with some local non-profits. He does some web design work for them. In return they give him money and a power supply. There he figures out what parts are good and which are bad and pulls them together to make new, working computers. Not sure what he does with them then.

Parts
A lot of stuff you see on the sidewalk isn't stuff you particularly want. However, it often has components that you might want.

I've got some brass knobs and fittings that I've gathered off TV cabinets and whatnot.

I keep having to prevent myself from picking up VCRs. Not because I want a VCR. No, VCRs are rich sources of parts. A good Christmas gift for a kid is a VCR and a set of screwdrivers. They get to figure out how the VCR works and strip it for it's motors and gears and the like. I've seen some makers who turn the display into a small sound amplifier. Another left it mostly intact so they could use the timer to activate the motors at specified times to build an automatic cat feeder. Search http://blog.makezine.com for ideas for old VCRs.

An old TV or computer monitor with a cathode ray tube can be adapted as a high energy power supply for ion lifters and cheap Tesla Coils.

Non-sidewalk Sidewalk Economy
There are other areas where the ideal holds up but the sidewalk goes away.

In the city, where there's lots of foot traffic, the sidewalk is great. As you get out in the suburbs and countryside leaving stuff for strangers is likely to get you written up for dumping. For you, there's CraigsList. That's probably how I'll pass on the cabinets now that we're looking at getting rid of them.

College is fertile ground for the Sidewalk Economy. You have people moving in and out twice a year or more. People graduating and no longer needing rather dorm specific merchandise.

A couch older than me came to college with me when I got my own place. My ex-gf was moving in after I left that place so she got it. It went with her after college and was kept when she got married. It's moved on now, but I'm not sure where.

A futon came through my place that has had more owners than I've had jobs.

Family is also good. Grandma gave me the couch and coffee table I have now. She buys a new car every other or every third year. Her old car goes to Mom who either lets Grandma trade in her old one or passes it on to me or my brother and trades in our old vehicle. Grandma is hoping that Yummy will be able to haul off this massive desk that Yummy covets when we next go to Kansas. There's a dresser in the Bunk House at Grammie's farm that Yummy adores and wants to put in my bedroom. Actually, she wants it for herself, but her father is getting sick of her furniture hording.

Note: Furniture from family is great. Furniture from friends is good. Furniture on the sidewalk deserves intense suspicion. That's how you get fleas, bedbugs, and a house that smells like mildew.

Ah, the Bunk House. I haven't said much about the farm influence I alluded to earlier. It has made me more inclined to use something and fix it until all hope is lost. Bits and pieces of things get stuffed behind workshops and in barns in the hope of using it some day. That bit of metal can be welded to this plow when something breaks. In fact, it's often preferred to buy used from a farmer instead of new from a dealer because the repairs made by the farmer make it stronger and better than the original design. Above the Bunk House is a stack of dusty and worn campaign posters that were used by Grandpa's... uncle, maybe? El Cid, I know you're reading. Who was Lesley Wise? Anyway, I got one of the better looking posters framed by a coworker taking a framing class and it hangs in my office. In the dark and dusty corners of the farm there have been old crank telephones, oil lanterns, a scythe, a brick press used by Great Grandmother, a generator dating before rural electrification, a horse drawn corn wagon or two, a corn sheller (de-kernaler), and a ton of other stuff. Some of which has been passed on to collectors. Some of which I've restored for my own collection. The point being that we store stuff away for decades instead of throwing them out. Even with the Grandma car trade there are other vehicles that we've kept using for 20 years before selling to people who want the well cared for parts.

I think of the Sidewalk Economy as filling a niche in the economy. It's like how in nature you'll see creatures evolve to take advantage of any food source. People drop chicken, parrots drop fruit, lions leave meat, and other creatures move in to eat what other have dropped. Then other creatures move in to eat what that one has dropped. People like me pick up goods that others have dropped and leave other stuff out for still more to use.

Five years ago The Sidewalk Economy would have been laughable to most people. You throw stuff out and buy it new. But the regular economy has taken some hits recently. It's time to conserve your funds a bit. Try your hand at plumbing and oil changes. Classes on how to knit or do woodwork are filling up. People are trying to relearn old skills. I think this is a wonderful thing and hope you'll participate.