Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Scrounging/skipping/borrowing - freebies, basically

Goodness Gracious Meme

20:55 / 17.10.02

What are the best things you've got for free? Asking as I seem to be going through a phase of acquiring fab stuff for no cash, something that seems to happen reasonably often:

Found a *huge* plumpy floor cushion while walking home the other day, just as it was starting to rain... managed to get it home without too much damage and will be reclining on it in ooh, about 15 minutes... aaaaaaah. *Love* my town, people always leave stuff on the street, found a friend a filing cabinet the other day...

Tonight have just acquired (on a short-term lend) a fab button-up denim dress from a mate who needs to lose 1/2 a stone to fit into it... her loss, my gain, and at least this way she gets it back!

and a good place to offer thanks to the lovely Lyra for a turntable, have been buying and listening to vinyl for the first time in years... and am in danger of become just as much of a vinyl snob as the man himself...

And am about to 'inherit' a fabbo brown velour 70s sofa from an ex, lost in the divorce, now coming home to mama. (and eventually, also post-divorce, a fab six-foot metal stainless steel kitchen shelving unit)

what have you got for free? give me your stories...

Murray Hamhandler

21:08 / 17.10.02

Most of two computers, a turntable, a couch, a bed, a table, shelving...mostly all acquired when people were moving and didn't want to lug extraneous stuff along. Moving time is like Christmas for Deric, it is.

21:19 / 17.10.02

Got a car for free a couple of years ago. It was dented and not at all cool in any way but it had tax, MOT, a little bit of petrol and it got me around for about 8 months until I had enough money to buy another one. I didn't even have to pay to have it scrapped because the nice man who sold me the new one took it off me for disposal.

I loved that car, it made me laugh a lot. Beep beep.

22:14 / 17.10.02

I got my first car for free. It was an old Ford that the preachers son didn't want anymore. He said it needed a starter. My buds and I found the hole where a starter should go, creeped into the junkyard one night and stole the thing in the hole of a similar car. Voila! I was king of the road!

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:50 / 17.10.02

This makes my tales of free CDs somewhat meaningless. Gah.

I did get a rather nice pair of Campers for free once. That's about it. But hey, y'takes what y'can get.

Tryphena Absent

23:57 / 17.10.02

My brother bought me Ben and Jerry's ice-cream tonight. He may be ill. He's never bought me anything outside of birthday/christmas time before. I do drive him everywhere when I'm back mind you.

02:04 / 18.10.02

Free CDs. On a regular basis. By setting up a review site and then contacting record companies. because my money dried up when i became a freelance book editor. and i wanted new CDs.

of course the site's lain fallow for months now. i suck as a web-operator.

it's called the scam, if anyone is interested.

m.

02:04 / 18.10.02

Oh - also the love of the good woman I'm proud to call my girlfriend.

now you really think I suck, don't you?

m.

03:32 / 18.10.02

I once found a very nice bound copy of Virgil's THE ANEID (In Latin with an English translation following). And of course there was Rusty Murphy. In a book titled 'Immortality: The Scientific Evidence' published in nineteen-fifty-something, a friend and I found a 1971 food stamp for a man named Rusty Murphy. We got a kick out that, and I still have the stamp. We have turned Rusty Murphy into our collaborative pseudonym.

04:22 / 18.10.02

Stuff from the streets near my house or found on the way home from work:
PCs - once a 200MHz with CD-ROM drive!
Macs - 8100, SE
Monitors
Antique sewing table
Two small round tables
Two 1970s-style floor lamps
4 issues of Suck, "Europe's First Sexpaper," published 1969-73, with a rude gossip column by Germaine Greer
Joy Division "Closer" and "Unknown Pleasures"

I love this town

06:34 / 18.10.02

Bengali in Platforms is also about to get a new phone, if I remember to bring it on Saturday.

Tech journalism and freebies - yum. I work for a US wire now so I'm not allowed to accept stuff - boo. But before I turned unwillingly ethical I got all sorts of stuff - phones and PDAs and trips to exotic climes. Now I just get the odd free pen.

I've never been very good at finding stuff in the street - I think I walk along in too much of a dream.

06:35 / 18.10.02

I mean Sunday, sorry.

07:42 / 18.10.02

Well. I found £20 last week in the park which ROCKED... obviously.
I remember finding old jazz mags when I was a kid (too young to buy 'em myself, or actually to be quite sure what was going on) ... in terms of impact on self.. wooo! Didn't know if I was aroused or insane or guilty or what.

*shudders*

10:41 / 18.10.02

I've been pirating myself dozens of the old CDs in recent weeks.. everything from Miles Davis and soundtracks to Lynch movies to Bratmobile and the 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster.. it feels good.

Also got a groovy purple jumper for free. I, um, found it in an empty house..

11:54 / 18.10.02

Sad to say 50% of the clothes I own are either hand-me-downs or promotional gifts. I call it Lig Casual.

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:23 / 18.10.02

Deric: yeah, i get that, as well, people doing clearouts always call me to see if i want to dig through the stuff!

Actually, bjacques, you've made me look around my flat and realise that bar the bed and bookshelves, most of it is hand-me-downs and finds:

two seventies lamps found in my parents attic
two chests of drawers
tv cabinet
telephone table
a broken laptop from my dad - all i need to do is plug a monitor in...

oh and a pair of rather swanky golf shoes, bought for me by a friend who saw them in a charity shop.

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:24 / 18.10.02

oh, and ariadne, thanks loads, had forgotten all about that...

Our Lady of The Two Towers

12:42 / 18.10.02

I've occasionally found books, CDs and videos in the libraries deleted stuff, pre-booksale, got a copy of 'V for Vendetta' that way, one of those new Moorcock 'Tales of the Eternal Champion' things and the 'Crow Road' video, along with a John Adams CD and a Bjork album. I'm sure it's just a matter of months before we start selling old DVDs.

The Apple-Picker

12:50 / 18.10.02

Let's see, I got a somewhat nice looking watch for free that has a stretchy band, which is nice, and since it was free I don't feel bad when it gets banged up a little (actually, I banged it up within two hours of owning it--I rammed my wrist right into a display shelf and scratched the crystal--but my wrist was safe! Thank goodness for that watch). This came to me for free when I worked in the glorious land of retail, and I won it from a vendor.

In the same job, I got another watch for free when a customer bought a new one. She handed me her old one and said she didn't want it anymore.

I got a free lunch, which made me very happy, because now I know that there is such a thing as a free lunch. --I'm not talking about a date or anything here, either.

In the same vain, sometimes my dessert or drink will end up on the house. I can only attribute this to my charms. And my remarkable modesty.

Recently, I got a hold of an old little side table that my rowdy old neighbors put out by the trash. It had cigarette burns in it and stuff, but I filled them with wood putty and spray painted the whole thing copper. They put out lots of other things to the trash, but I was scared to touch some of it.

I have a few ceramics projects that my old roommate was going to throw out, from which I'm afraid to eat 'cause I don't know what kind of glazes they are, but they look pretty cool.

I don't know if it counts, but my parents give me all kinds of stuff. Every time I come home, my mom loads me up with more goods, and who am I to complain?

I now have more dishes than perhaps anyone living on her own deserves to have, since I had a full 8 place set of stuff I got from a charity shop, and now I have more than half of 8 place settings of china from my grandma. They look nice in the cabinet, though!

The one that got away was a perfectly solid sofa sitting on the side of the road. I should have taken it while I had the chance because it rained. And it rained and rained, and only a fool would take that thing now. I still have no sofa.

XXII:X:II = XXX

13:44 / 18.10.02

I have dubbed this skill of finding possessions and furnishings for little or no money "thrift fu." I practice it whenever I can. I've got 2 easy chairs, a TV stand, 3 bookcases and a child's activity center that I use to store my LPs and a toy collection in my living room, all of which I've either pulled out of garbage piles or were abandoned in odd places. When perusing the trashheaps doesn't yield much, I take myself to the thrift shops and see what presents itself to me for insanely cheap. Actually I've got to do that tomorrow to look for components to my Halloween costume. My recommendation, though crass on some levels, is seek out the AIDS charity thrift stores. Not only are you contributing to a worthy cause, but let's face it, much of the items there are from the estates of recently deceased, fairly young people, of a demographic that tends towards the fashionable, novel and progressive. Most other shops have clothes cleaned out of Granddad's attic when he kicked off; who needs that many pairs of plaid pants?

14:41 / 18.10.02

Best thing I ever got for free was a huge bundle of Elvis fan club magazines from the '60s that a bunch of us found in a skip as kids. I had to get rid of them recently, very reluctantly. They were classic and had loads of anti-Beatles propaganda in them!

14:42 / 18.10.02

This thread's put me in mind of one of my favourite things ever -

back when I was in college I was having a really bad day and was storming along a corridor being grumpy when I tripped over a hefty object..
..got up to find I'd tripped over a gigantic omnibus of Philip K. Dick stories, just left there in the middle of the floor.. cheered me up no end.

(Ridiculously, I still haven't gotten round to reading it..)

08:49 / 21.10.02

Freely given:-

All of my current PC and Half of my firewall PC.
The Vintage IBM in the loft.
Vintiage Tosh in the loft.
Atari Woody ditto.
Various Pong machines ditto.
Mountains of SF pulp.

Skip raked:-

Executive office chair.
Large Oak Desk.
Sideboard/Cupboard affair.
Acres of shelving.

Sent free after internet searches:-

Shampoo.
Deoderant.
Stickers.
Fridgemagnets.
T-Shirts.
Hats.
Bottle opener.
Watch.
Mugs.
Sweets.
Toys.
Pens.

I love free stuff and getting parcels from the postman thrills me even when they contain shite.

21:22 / 21.10.02

Almost as if in response to this thread (Aargh, sound of grammar gears scraping together) my good friend and mentor, who I will call DF, yesterday gave me a huge box of old videos,comics, business directories and even one spanking new DVD. Like most of the good deeds he has done for me this worked to his benefit as well as mine, as it cleared out space in his house, but it was still very lovely.