Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging

7. Scrounging Zen

Empire of Scrounge has, I hope, documented some of the many ways in which urban scavenging undermines the existing order of things. As consumers set out yesterday’s goods on the curb or discard them in the trash bin, and as scroungers explore these marginal accumulations, sorting and saving and reusing what they Wnd there, consumers and scroungers alike cooperate to subvert all manner of neatly dualistic categories: commodity versus trash, public versus private, possession versus dispossession. Part of this subversion is transgressive; the daily, informal exchange of secondhand goods keeps the city’s boundaries open, its situations porous and permeable, and in so doing erodes revanchist strategies for partitioning the city by social class and privilege. Other aspects of this subversive dynamic are economic. Operating as a far-Xung underground economy, the empire of scrounge connects homeless scroungers, independent scrap haulers, scrap yard denizens, junk artists, and yard sale aWcionados—and more remarkably, exists as an underground economy that oVers for Scrounging Zen 185 Scrounging Zen c e ce c e c e c e 7 many of them a lived alternative to the very consumer economy on whose discards it operates. As a practice of boundary transgression and economic independence, urban scrounging also subverts conventional legal categories; despite the stern eVorts of legal and political authorities, scrounging continues to Xoat somewhere between property theft and ecological salvation, social problem and celebrated self-reliance. And in each of these cases, it seems to me, the subversive power of urban scrounging builds from its inherent humanity; as an ambiguous and largely autonomous human process, it’s ever-shifting meanings and slippery contexts erode the certainty of law, property, and commerce. But for all that, eight months as a full-time urban scrounger, and ongoing participation in urban scrounging and scavenging since, have suggested to me some deeper subversions as well. As seen in previous chapters, Situationists would see such deep subversions as moments of détournement, moments in which the taken-forgranted order of daily life unravels. I would agree, and would also call these subversions existential, since they seem to expose and undermine fundamental, everyday notions of existence, meaning, identity, and purpose. Similarly, these subversions might be distinguished from scrounging’s economic and legal dynamics to the extent that they shape and reshape moments of personal experience—though, as we will see, this is not to say that they aren’t soundly political and economic as well. In fact, it may well be that these existential subversions oVer avenues into social issues, and insights into issues of crime and justice, as important as those routes more conventionally taken. Whatever their broader implications , though, these subversive understandings did in fact emerge for me as an accumulation of lived moments. Walking and bicycling mile after mile, scavenging curbside trash piles and diving Dumpsters day after day, I came to realize that I was scrounging more than material artifacts. It seemed I was scrounging time and space. Or maybe I was scrounging myself. Time In the day-to-day process of scrounging by foot or on a bicycle, a distinct sort of pace emerges—one that is distinctly diVerent from the usual pace set by workday automotive commutes, oYce hours, and suburban mall shopping. The physiology of walking and the physics of a simple secondhand bicycle begin to set this pace; when utilized for scrounging, both move the body and the mind through urban space at a dawdler’s velocity. Yet this slow, uncertain movement occurs by intention as well as by physical limitation; spotting a hidden Dumpster and easing over to it, rolling up on a curbside trash pile, walking the street’s gutters while looking for coins or cans or auto parts, the scrounger is well served by a pace geared to the slow process of noticing and investi186 Scrounging Zen gating. Certainly the low cost, do-it-yourself economy of walking or bicycling Wts the cash-poor economy of urban scrounging—but in fact so does the attentive pace that these modes of transportation oVer. Wandering a mile or so of street in an hour, rather than driving down that street at sixty miles an hour, oVers the scrounger advantages of both time and money. In my experience, another practical advantage accrues: The scrounger arriving by foot or bicycle presents less sense of threat or intrusion than does the scrounger arriving by pickup or car, and so...