Saxophones Saxophones, rarely discussed

[mark_addy]

In France too, but if you are cool, and if you're discret and At worst, you can negotiate or explain things politely, you will not have problem,

That is function in France

I know what you mean. And being older helps - if someone threatened my mid-50s, greying, bespectacled self with the police as my feet poked out of their skip, I reckon I'd find that pretty funny!

 

[Wade Cornell]

I would have bought it right then had thye demo model been available, as I didn't want to wait a year.

You wouldn't have to wait a year now...

 

[Stephen Howard]

It is good that you both can resurrect "dumpster dive" (a common US term meaning to retrieve items being binned / trashed) saxophones and return them to their former glory. (Here in town they recently passed a law making it illegal to retrieve items from dumpster bins. I can see a future local paper article: "Salvation Army Saxist Caught Dumpster Diving Behind Tarpley Music Store"!)

Saxes used as lamp bodies, flower vases and plaque mounted wall ornaments remind me of game animal trophy heads mounted to walls. 🤮 😉

Over here it's called Skip Diving.
When I was setting up my shop in Notting Hill we hired a skip to take away all the junk in the basement - much of which was a motley collection of old string instruments that had succumbed to years of damp.
Managed to fill the entire skip with such junk in a day - but when we returned the next morning most of it was gone. Better yet, it hadn't been replaced with old sofas and cookers.

This pattern carried on for three or four days - and we were mightily pleased because it meant we only had to pay to have the one skip emptied.
The joy was short-lived, however, because over the next few months folks brought in all that old crap for repair. It got properly tiresome telling people that we threw it out because it either couldn't be fixed, was beyond economic repair or was just plain junk. But perhaps the worst of it was the stories that some folks built around their mouldy violins and rotten banjos. "Had it in the family for years", "Belonged to my grandad"..."Previously owned by Lonnie Donegan".

Skip etiquette over here is that it's best to ask whoever's responsible for it if you can take some stuff out of it - which avoids an ugly scene if they think you're putting your own crap into it or looking for documents with personal details on them.
This often has a side benefit because folks will sometimes say "Oh, you're interested in old computers/scrap metal/offcuts of wood/shelving? Come on in - we've got loads! Help yourself!"
In principle though, few people mind if you want to take stuff out of a skip because it means they can get more in it.

But...some people are strange. "That's MY rubbish...and you're not having any of it!!"

 

[turf3]

What happens in my city is that you put stuff out on the curb a week before the truck comes, and then the scavengers pick up almost all of it.

 

[Stocker]

In outer-ring suburbs and exurbs here, if you leave something at the end of your driveway with a "FREE" sign on it on Saturday morning it'll usually be gone before lunch.

 

[Pete Thomas]

In outer-ring suburbs and exurbs here, if you leave something at the end of your driveway with a "FREE" sign on it on Saturday morning it'll usually be gone before lunch

Round here if you do that nobody takes it. But if you put a sign saying for sale £2 please enquire within then it’ll be gone before you can bat an eyelid.

 

[mark_addy]

In principle though, few people mind if you want to take stuff out of a skip because it means they can get more in it.

My sister threw out a toilet one afternoon into a skip outside the house she and her husband had recently bought. By evening it was gone. By next morning, the one which presumably her old one had replaced (in someone else's house) was back in her skip. I thought that was fair enough, really 🙂