I try to keep my camera on the ready for anything while I’m on the road, but in retrospect, I sometimes wonder what motivated me to take some of the shots I have. I guess I saw that that this old Corolla was loaded up to the gills, but I don’t think I full realized what its contents were until I cropped the picture, which is after the jump:
On the very top is a kind of pet carrier called a Sleepypod.
As the owner of more pet carriers than I can count on two hands I feel qualified to describe the Sleepypod as the Audi of pet carriers.
So, you have to make a lot of really expensive repairs on your Sleepypod?
HA!
After 5 years its worth 20% of its value and you throw it out when it’s 10.
Love this comment.
Saw this photo yesterday. It’s the BACK end of an Audi S4. And apparently id the A/C compressor fails, this is where you have to go to replace it http://i.imgur.com/6cB5Zwj.jpg
Holy $h!t that’s some German engineering!
Wow. And that’s not even a “W” engine, is it?
Har har! Every night when I say my prayers I thank god that he gave me the sense not to buy Audis or Saabs.
I hope they were moving or making a dump trip or something.
Very, very early in my news career I covered a crash involving an early Hyundai and a Ford Explorer. The Ford was a little banged up but the Hyundai was smashed. It was so full of stuff like folding chairs and toys and soda bottles the roadway looked like an explosion at Big Lots.
There were kids in the backseat, not injured by the crash, but by all the flying crap.
That’s why I don’t keep a lot of stuff in my car.
There’s having “stuff” in your car, and then there’s this, which is hoarding in your car, this persons house, if they still have or had one, is probably the same, with a narrow path walkway through a canyon of mountains of garbage piled sky high.
I can’t say for certain that this person lives in the car but I suspect it. I’ve seen it many, many times around west Eugene where I live. Sad state for the old NUMMI.
I saw a Nissan Altima here crammed full of all kinds of trash except for the drivers seat, the driver was literally sitting in the middle of trash
There was a catfish Taurus wagon that I used to see on the road that was like that, the driver just sat in a small space carved out of the trash, from the tailgate down to the base of the windshield.
Good lord that is disgusting. There is a Integra at my work like that. I will try to get a shot of it. I worked at Sears tire and auto for a month and had to drive in (to the shop) and change tires on a 90’s Mazda 323 with the whole back seat filled with McDonald papers. As I drove it back out to the parking lot I had to hit the brakes to avoid a dog that ran by and was rewarding with a crap load of McDonald’s papers raining down on me. I quit the next day
Best laugh of my putrid day.
That screams homeless person on the final rung of the shelter ladder. I don’t think we should mock them.
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Went to the Toyota dealership to pick up my brother while he was having some work done on his Camry. There was a Prius in the parking lot that looked nice and clean on the outside but had two litterboxes in the back seat and seemed a little “ripe”. The tech told me the owner lets her cats live in it during the cold months.
Cue the crazy theme song.
Not to sound like a jerk, but is this how “all” of Oregon looks? Trash in the ditch? It seems very unkempt. I ask because I’m extremely interested in moving out there for the weather (no time for a visit, yet). The sight of that car would cause stops and stares along the clean, currently prosperous streets of the Midwest. Again, not being rude or naive, but it seems very common.
You mean like in Detroit?
Detroit metro has the same population as Oregon state. Detroit would be on the very edge of what’s considered “Midwestern” (I sure as hell wouldn’t consider it Midwestern). OK, the Plains states of the Midwest is more what I meant (think traditionally red or purple states [low unemployment throughout the Great Recession]).
It’s horrible and messy everywhere here…don’t even think of moving here!!!
Seriously, that photo, on the busiest freeway intersection in the area, is not exactly representative. I’d say things here are fairly to quite clean along the roads; I’ve never really thought of Oregon as being messier that way than average. But generally speaking, the towns and cities are not quite as anal retentive as some Midwest places; folks here are just generally more relaxed.
Ponder our winter weather before you move, unless you’re thinking east of the Cascades. On the west side, we can go weeks without seeing the sun in the winter. Are you good with that? No tendencies to depression/SAD (seasonal Affective Disorder)? If so, you’re probably good to go.
Rather anal retentive here, thanks for the tidbit. Quite the opposite of general SAD diagnoses actually, reverse SAD one might say. Haven’t heard of the OR sun-winter situation, something to research. Thanks for the timely reply!
I would say the vehicles in the Midwest are in rougher condition than the vehicles in Oregon and most of the state is very lovely.
That’s where the saying, “We have two seasons–winter and road-work” comes into play. The weather and the busted-up roads from plows destroy vehicles. I almost never see anything older than a ’97 vehicle on the road (other than 3800-equipped Buick!), unlike this…thing…that would have rusted out in 5 years in the Midwest (doesn’t look like it could plow through much snow anyway).
Not really. But Oregon has, in the last 20-30 years, become seriously infected with the mental illness known as liberalism…anything goes here…been here all my life (47yrs) makes me want to vomit. But outside of the corridor between the Peoples Republic of Eugene and Portland, the state is really awesome, but just be careful not to stumble on to a mexican drug cartel weed farm, they WILL shoot you.
Yes, beware! The communists, hippies and anarchists might brain wash you, so better stay away! But they do know how to have fun…
Yeah, that’s all they know: fun and political correctness.
And no, I’m not a conservative. Virginia is currently showing me that in spades.
Its like wrong for you to charge like rent for people to live somewhere man, shelter should be free….dude……. man…… and like……your old truck pollutes too much man…..and its tuff appearance offends me and members of my community man…….meat is like….murder……..
Close, and a good effort. But the reality is this: Dude, your old truck is soo totally cool, man….(never mind how it pollutes, as do all the old VW buses and such). I never fail to get smiles and thumbs up, and from the full political spectrum as well as age spectrum. Young women, especially….It reeks of the kind of the simple life, DIY, backyard-gardening, self-sufficient values that are very big here.
Now if I was driving a new F350 dually, it’d be a whole different ball game…It’s feeding the corporations, man…. Unless it’s a Toyota Tacoma 4×4, which is the calling card of every pot grower. Talk about giving away your profession…
Meat? It’s madly ok, as long as it came from a local farm, or better yet, your back yard. There’s some folks a couple of blocks away that have dozens of rabbits for eating, in addition to the chickens and ducks.
And charging rent? They’re jealous. They do it too (or would like to). In reality, most “hippies”, which is a very broad and loose term, are actually very free-market/libertarian/, for pretty obvious reasons.
There’s a very progressive “Eco-village” in town, but it’s owned by one guy, and he charges none-too cheap rent to live there.
I love me some free range lgbt friendly 100% recycled ethically made tofu!
There are cars like this EVERYWHERE. Not far from my office in downtown Honolulu, I know of at least two cars just like this within walking distance, actually trucks – a decrepit mid 80’s S-10 (the guy DOES live in that one) and an old 70’s Econoline Ford Van.
Notice how low that poor Corolla sits though, so it’s full of well, stuff, which from the looks of things may well be just that, garbage.
That said, for those thinking of the Pacific NW in general (Oregon and Washington), our winters are not only very gray, but often wet too, from roughly Oct through April.
Vehicles like these bother me. Instinctively you want to help the person, but then are not sure who would be best for the task or how you would go about doing that. These vehicles are not all that common here in Central New York, I think the police, annual safety inspections, and people refusing to work on vehicles this full of rubbish keep their number lower. Now what I do see occasionally are Minivans and Vans (occasionally an RV) with a decent amount of debris in them, but never anything like this.
I do think the annual safety/emissions inspection cuts down on the incidence in places like NY versus other states that do not have those requirements.
I usually see them loaded like that down here when people is moving. Specially if it is interstate.
I don’t see many of these, but they are around the midwest too. But the hoarders here usually start with a Cavalier. I suppose there is some kind of efficiency involved, as when the car quits, you can do all of your recycling at once.
I remember a brown 89-90 Cavalier that I used to see from time to time that belonged to a crazy old man. He was wearing the same clothes every time I used to see him, brown old man pants and very stained white shirt and a ratty brown Members Only style jacket, he ALWAYS had a slightly bent lit cigarette in his mouth and he could smoke 2 cigarettes in the span of 20 feet, just chain smoking from one to another, while mumbling to himself.
His Cavalier sedan had the rear seat almost filled to window level with a selection of disposable coffee cups, like the kind you get at fast food establishments, hundreds of them, mostly Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds, you could see that the oldest ones were almost faded white. I stopped seeing him a while back so he either must have died or been committed or something…..
I think that Flickr has/had a group dedicated to pictures of hoarder cars.
At a big box discount store, I recently saw a Chrysler T&C minivan 2005ish that was hoarded out enough to drop it down on its suspension even parked in the handicapped parking slot. I knew how bad it was since I once had to borrow a relatives similar T&C to move boxes of books and and a full load of book boxes 3′ tall didn’t drop the suspension as bad as the hoarded T&C’s was sagging. I walked the store aisles and eventually identified the “crazy cat lady” looking person who was piloting one of the electric handicapped shopping scooters as the most likely culprit for the hoard mobile.
At first glance it looks like someone’s moving. I’ve crammed my car full of my stuff like that when I’ve had to do a cheap move instead of renting a U-Haul. My ’83 Subaru GL station wagon was perfect for this kind of duty with the rear seat folded down. But a closer look at the contents reveals a bunch of crap that I wouldn’t take with me instead of carefully triaged possessions inside garbage bags and discarded liquor store boxes, so yeah this is a homeless person’s more mobile shopping cart. I hope life gets better for them (and that I and all of you never have to experience this situation).
Was the car moving or broken down?
Moving, unless my memory has failed me. This was shot last spring.
I am now thinking of the ’70 Ford Galaxie 500 that used to sit off of Park Street (estuary side of Alameda) in Alameda for quite a few years. It was definitely a “mobile home” loaded with mostly crap. Whoever owned it was smart enough to move it around every 12 hours or so, although on a few occasions, I would see the orange “warning” sticker on it. I believe this car has made an appearance on the Internet (Alameda cars). It has/had it’s original “Broadway Ford -Oakland” sticker on the rear bumper.
I see this all the time. The guy is just getting it ready to run across the scales. He probably expects to get twice blue book for scrap metal if nobody notices.
Here’s the car although this shot doesn’t show the tons of crap that used to be in it when I was residing in Alameda between 2007-2009. BTW – at a sheet metal facility a block up from this is a garage FILLED with classics and a sheet metal shop that has a straight, complete but de-trimmed ’57 Nash Ambassador sitting in the lot.
My last visit back to Alameda in October, 2011 still had this Ford and the Nash.
I like how it looks, the steelies with whitewalls give it a “Bluesmobile” vibe.
Back in ’97 I worked as a service dispatcher at a large Cleveland area Ford dealer. We had this rather batty middle aged woman with a Contour that had a serious hoarding problem. I mean REALLY serious. The only seat left in the car was hers… One hot muggy summer day she brings the pile in to service complaining that the a/c didn’t work. My brother was a tech and he got the misfortune of having the job dispatched to him. Well, after a couple of minutes he comes back to my desk and throws the r.o. at me complaining that the car stinks inside and he won’t work on it. I kind of figured he was exaggerating so I walked out and stuck my head in the car to find out for myself what the problem was… I damn near threw up. GAWD did that car smell BAD!!! The woman didn’t understand why we wouldn’t work on her car but she did OK having one of our porters clean it out… he found her cat… dead… in a shoebox buried on the right rear footwell. She never noticed any smell…