Photos of trash cars
Robyn Miller, a permaguest blogger at Dinosaurs and Robots, took this photo of an old station wagon stuffed to the gills with garbage. He then went looking for more of the same on Flickr and posted five other examples of trash cars. I imagine you could sift through the junk in each car and piece together an interesting, albeit sad, life story of its owner.
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Are the vehicles also thought to be trash as well? or more of a vessel, like a dumpster?
what you can't see are the bodies of the 10 dead hookers in that station wagon.
to see cars like that that people really drive around check out the long term parking at hospitals..i have seen a few--no joke--
I saw one of these cars last year in the Marina district of San Francisco:
http://neil.fraser.name/news/2007/stuffed_car_1.jpg
http://neil.fraser.name/news/2007/stuffed_car_2.jpg
It was completely full, except for a 3-dimensional hole perfectly shaped for one human in the driver's seat. Frightening sight.
These cars are built over time. Lived with an agorophobe who rented my wife and I an illegal inlaw in the basement of the Berkeley Hills home HE was renting from someone else. He only went out and night and was reclusive. He had THREE cars like this. As the first one died he parked it in the garage and packed the car into the garage with trash all the way around it. The second dead one lived on the front lawn. Inside the third one, which he still drove and which was only 2/3 full, he shot himself in the head. The house was sold and he (along with we) had to vacate within 30 days. He had filled the entire upstairs of the house just like these cars and couldn't imagine moving it all elsewhere. He torched the home and x-ed hisself in his trash car up the street. He was an astronomy prof at UC Berkeley.
Holy shit. There is one of those cars in my town. It's freaky to see other ones!!
Imagine what their houses look like! If they have one. Very sad.
I think it's mistakenly romantic to assume you could pull a life story out of the process of sifting through the contents.
People if this state are not storing "meaningful" things to you and I, the basis for keeping things is diffent, there is essentially no editing.
I might discover that the person stores urine in jars, hundreds of hamburger wrappers and empty soda cups, but that's not really a life story in a traditional sense.
What you would walk away with, is an amazing sense of emptiness, mental illness, and sadness
One of these caught fire outside of my work.
I think this is much like the hoarder mentality. Hearing the story by Antonrobb confirms this in an anecdotal way. I wonder if there is a specific mental illness associated with this.
Goldarnit, don't you go disparaging that there beeyooteeful Ford Fairmont wagon. I drive one just like it (minus the garbage) and I don't consider it an "old car" - slightly vintage maybe, but not old. The Fairmont was built on the Fox chassis which was the same as used for the Mustang 5.0, a very, very drivable piece of Detroit iron.
Truly unfortunate that some dufus craploaded the inside of that good looking wagon.
There are plenty more of them in the "Garbage Car" photo pool on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/garbagecar/pool/
I was going to ask whether it was the Myst Robyn Miller, but having clicked the link I guess it is. How odd!
I did have a car that I treated as a mobile rubbish container, when refurbishing my house I'd slowly fill it up and when full I'd drive it to the recycling facility and empty it, drive home and start over. It was pretty useful.
I saw a trash-filled van once at a convenience store. My mom and I could not stop gawking at it, walking around it to see how the trash filled the passenger seat, back seats, and trunk. We couldn't understand how anyone could drive it without being able to see out of it. There was some trash even on the driver's seat, but it had obviously been molded over time by the driver's body. I just can't imagine living like that, and I'm thankful I don't have to either.
Actually, this looks like every second car on the freeway the day before college starts (just add a mattress on the roof) ;)
Seriously, though: Isn't this just an extension of squalor? Teresa pointed this affliction out in the post about the very messy apartment.
I blame all the crap in my car on cars like this; I look at these photos and say, "Eh, mine's not nearly this bad."
I should take a photo of the car that our local dumpster diver uses for the gleanings from our apartment complex. Stuffed full, yes, but it's all meticulously sorted and organized. I'll have to see how he feels about a lookie-lou.
One clarification should be made..there's a difference between Trash Cars and Mobile Gypsy Cars. There's trash..and there's belongings. I had a red 90 Celica that was PACKED with all my stuff in Philly in fall of 99 that was almost as bad as that, but not a lick of trash persay. Once I found a home, the stuff found a home (outside the car).
This featured photo is just another wonderful happening in the Lilac City - Spokane!
http://spokanarama.blogspot.com/2008/08/as-seen-downtown.html
Here's one that I caught on Polaroid a few months ago in Portland:
http://pixelgrain.org/polaroid366/photos/2619270643/
Here are two pictures of a trashcar I spotted in Quincy, IL:
http://pubcrawler.org/images/ben_lori_wedding/DSCN1452_small.jpg
http://pubcrawler.org/images/ben_lori_wedding/DSCN1453_small.jpg
Alan Bennett has written a lovely humane novelette, "The Lady in the Van," about one such car hoarder and the neighbor who tries to help her.
http://www.amazon.com/Clothes-They-Stood-Lady-Today/dp/0812969650/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224042904&sr=1-2