Every year the city of Santa Clara has a city-wide clean up campaign. What does that entail? Basically, it means that residents can throw away anything they don't want by taking it to the curb. It literally is anything: couches, bookshelves, mattresses, vacuum cleaners, books, appliances, patio furniture, clothes, old calendars even toilets. Not only does the neighborhood look like a dump for a few weeks, but the scavengers come out as well.
I'm not talking about people who poke around because they're curious about what other people are throwing out. The scavengers I'm talking about are the ones who really go to town on the things people throw out. They drive around in vans or trucks, pick through boxes, and even bring tools in case they need to disassemble things. It's a little unnerving when strange people are rummaging through piles of junk outside your home at all hours of the day. Some of these people were pretty creepy looking. Personally, I wouldn't take any of the stuff that's been thrown out, mostly because I don't know where it's been and it just seems gross. But I suppose for some folks, that really doesn't matter. The clean-up campaign definitely confirms the saying, "One person's trash is another person's treasure."
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