Humans have a silly problem with collecting a lot of stuff. Look, I have a few hundred Hot Wheels cars and darn near two dozen real vehicles, I get it. A lot of folks end up with so much stuff that their garages end up filled with boxes and other stuff. Garages shouldn’t be for junk, with a funny exception.
One of the stories in today’s Morning Dump was how EV adoption might be hampered by the fact that people fill their garages with stuff that’s not vehicles. Andrew Daisuke starts off with a hot take:
Garages are for cars, not all the shit that you never use.
Racer Esq. makes it funny:
What if the shit you never use is cars?
Jason wrote about how we created our own version of the Pebble Beach Dawn Patrol hat, and it created a mob of people all wanting hats. Grey alien in a beige sedan:
Waiting until Autopian gets an official C&D from Hagerty and Pebble Beach.
The response should be:
To whom it may concern:
We already ceased and desisted once the hats were distributed.And because they’ll be watching for these hats to come again next year instead of having the word autopian on there… just put the jalopnik logo on there so they get sued intead.
Church:
You guys are gonna get yourselves and Beau banned from Pebble Beach entirely and I am here for it. Thanks for being out there in the shit, doing the lord’s work.
Finally, there were some shenanigans at Mecum after an auction that seemed to have ended kept on going. Emil Minty:
He distinctly said, ‘To blave.’ And as we all know, ‘to blave’ means ‘to bluff.’ So, you’re probably playing cards and he cheated…”
Salaryman:
Inconceivable!
Rippstik:
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Have a great evening, everyone!
(Topshot: Mercedes Streeter)
A few years ago, HOA started making rumblings about forcing homeowners to store their trash and recycle bins in their garages. The backlash was apparently swift, as this topic hasn’t been mentioned in years. It seems like most people in this neighborhood use their garages to store stuff; I can’t imagine trying to cram our town’s giant bins in there too. (I have two vehicles in my two-car garage, along with a tool chest, various shelving units, a couple of workbenches, and a fridge.)
My garage is not full of junk, it’s full of motorcycles, various vehicle parts, fluids, filters, tools, an assortment of hoses and wires for bodging stuff together, and one very, very important beer fridge.
It just looks like junk to the philistine who wouldn’t know solid gold is actually a 25 year old Honda with a coolant leak, or a track bike that suffered a spontaneous assembly failure due to repeated contact with the ground.
Oh no, The Autopian just took my legal advice. This
could beis really bad.Time to change my user name to Saul Goodman.
I’ve got a rule of never letting stuff in the garage stop the cars from getting out. That’s how you end up with that 60s car sitting under 20 years of crap that Grandpa never could get running again. My friend’s uncle is like that.
However, I grew up in the north, in the land of basments and attics, and now live in the south, in a 70s house that has neither. It’s a real fight to keep the garage from becoming a storage bin, especially with working on cars in the middle of it all.
I now have a garage again, there was an intervention by well meaning folk. My house is, literally, a castle. The snags around castles are fairly obvious. First, they are massive things which means they need hundreds of people to run them. This is not a problem, they are both a statement of power and a defensive stronghold Mine one sort of failed on both levels. It got blown up in 1245, and then ransacked in 1343, the list goes on and on, it even got accidentally bombed by the USAF in 1945 (they were very apologetic) and then for tax reasons the roof was removed. Somehow through all this the buildings outside the walls survived and grew. I now have a garage inside a workshop inside a shed which is inside a barn!
My actual house? three bedrooms two bathrooms and a really really really big and solid wall at one end.
Nice to have a garage instead of a tent though. The Bentley looks almost content (probably because it is not in a tent)
It would be a really good space to build a big model railway in!
So, it got bombed? Was that in Europe? Or did they bomb England by mistake? I would think heating something that old would be very expensive. Lastly, does it have a moat to keep the riffraff out? I would love to have one.
The bombing was a mistake! Apparently it was a lost and damaged plane that thought it was jettisoning its bombs into the north sea! I has the remnants of a moat, aka known as the pond. Quite fitting as it only the remnants of a castle.
Well the first B52 to crash exploded over our farm. My father was working on a Caterpillar tractor, and the noise was so loud that he thought that the Caterpillar had thrown a rod or something. He crawled under the tractor to see, and when he crawled out there was flaming wreckage falling for miles in all directions. A piece left a big dent on the tractor.
For security reasons the airforce wouldn’t tell if there were nukes on board, and they spent months looking for wreckage and having sentries all over, so of course people thought they had lost an A bomb.
Not quite the same, but still a good story.
53-0384 If you want to google it.
Good thing you weren’t located near Goldsboro NC when a B-52 crashed there. 1961, two Mark 39 nukes were jettisoned. Both were armed. One bomb one switch out of all the triggers didn’t trip. They say that if that had there would have been a 17 mile diameter crater there. The other bomb buried itself into a swamp. They dug for the core for awhile. They never did find it. The site is now under state of North Carolina control with monitoring stations that are checked regularly for radioactive mitigation.
Yeah, that would have been bad.
Of course, if it had detonated after borrowing in, that would’ve been the worst possible scenario for fallout,
I dunno how you’re supposed to NOT have stuff (other than cars) in your garage… it’s either that, or sacrifice an actual room inside the house for storage since I don’t have a basement or shed or anything like that.
I’ve got a modest 3bed/2bath house and it’s got a two-car carport and a two-car garage (that I added). I can only get a single car in the carport and in the garage, because of stuff. There’s still a couple of driveways (one of which has yet another car parked in it).
I’d love to get rid of all the old workstations in the garage to make room for another car (my new-to-me 36 year old Volvo wagon) but it’d be such a big project (you can not imagine how heavy old SGIs are: like 3-4 times the weight of an old tower PC) that it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Attached is a photo of my garage before I bought my motorcycle, which is now parked in that little empty spot to the left: https://imgur.com/a/yEP6VMV
You could donate the old electronics to the local trade school. It would be great for hands on experience that is hard to come by with new electronics.
They absolutely do not want them.
Bummer
Unfortunately there isn’t much to learn from these things, IC circuits either work or don’t. Aside from capacitor failures, they really can’t be fixed like older analog electronics, and oftentimes what appears to be a failed capacitor is worse and you’ve gone through a lot of work and expense to not really fix anything.
I live in LA and while I’m sure there are trade schools somewhere, vocational training in general seems to have gotten short shrift in our society for years now, so they’re few and far between. Plus, as Max rightly points out, there’d not be much a trade school could do with them (well, they could be used to teach Unix, or obsolete OSes and apps, but of course there’s no call for any of that and/or easier ways to do it). Each of those Octanes/Octane IIs was roughly $50K each new in the 90s, and some of the installed software cost even more than that. It’s fine… all those workstations paid for themselves but I’d not mind getting the garage space back. Maybe someday my back will feel better? 😉
Reminds me of work in the 90’s. Company bought IBM’s biggest 3090 mainframe for millions. 5 years later, the new owners of the mainframe tore down the machine with bolt cutters. The only thing they wanted from the machine was their gold content. After that the company leased their mainframes.
I started working w/computers when I was in my early teens (in the 1970s) and became service manager for a group of retail Computerland stores shortly after. This was before Macs or the web: it was mostly MS-DOS or CP/M desktops, plus Apple // machines for home users. Visicalc was the software that went with most PCs for businesses. Anyway, we had lots of service contract clients all over the New York area, and a few of the bigger corporate ones had already had some kind of computer system(s) before they became our customer. One of them (I can’t recall which… maybe Texaco or Perkin Elmer) asked us to scrap/haul away an old computer for them and foolishly, someone on our end said ‘sure’ so I took a couple of techs and we went out there with the company van (just a regular cargo van: no power liftgate). This computer was an IBM and it was bigger than an upright piano. It was heavy as f*ck and we just barely got it into the van. Not knowing anything about it other than that it was old, I removed the hard drive from it, which was over a foot in diameter and enclosed in a clear plastic housing… no idea what kind of interface it used… later research showed it to be about 13 MB in size (this was back when 5MB Apple Profile hard disks were the standard for business systems). We eventually found a scrapyard in Queens to get rid of it (again: this was pre-web and pre-cellphone, so it involved a lot of just driving around to yards and asking them if they wanted it).
I wanted to kill the salesperson who agreed to get rid of the machine for the customer free of charge… it took three of us an entire day to do it and it’s probably the first time I really hurt my back.
Did you check the connectors? IBM used gold. A lot of the WWII military radios sold as surplus after the war were full of gold connectors. Very profitable scavenging. As the title to a recent article states “story
“Unearthing Hidden Treasures: Gold, Silver, and More in IBM Mainframe Components”
Sure, there’s gold on circuit boards and pricey cables (of which I have boxes and boxes) but it’s such a minute amount and the effort needed (and chemicals) to extract it are considerable… I’ve watched a few of the how-to videos on Youtube on this subject. I don’t know how much gold total there would be if I ground up/acid bathed/etc… all the old electronica, but I can’t imagine it’d be even a single ounce, less whatever it costs for the tools/chemicals/PPE to do it safely.
I’ll get rid of all this stuff eventually, or die first and it’ll be someone else’s problem. 🙂
You might give CalArts a call, artists love obsolete tech. When I was there someone made a musical instrument out of a phone company crossbar switch. There are things SGIs can do that are pretty cool, and one off equipment built around them.
There is a growing problem with art built on obsolete tech, particularly CRT displays.
When I have time, I’ll try to inventory the stuff and skim newsgroups, etc… to get rid of it all, but again, my back is so messed up I procrastinate about pulling weeds from the driveway, so the last thing I feel up for these days is shoving Octanes around.
Maybe I’ll inhereit a warehouse so I can move all this stuff out of my garage, and start collecting weird cars like Mercedes does… I saw an old Volvo 444 recently that I’d love to have. 😉
Some CalArts kids might just come down with a truck and take them off your hands.
When CBS shut down Bucula, one of the employees traded a dumpster full of synthesizer modules for full tuition. Or so I am told. I bet someone reading this knows the details.
Please protect your back while lifting. You could buy a 500 lb lift cart from Harbor Freight that will do the lifting for you. I speak from experience. 2 back surgeries, spinal stenosis (spinal canal isn’t big enough). You don’t want to end up paralyzed or eating oxycodone like M&M’s. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about garage space for sports cars.
Well that’s a very high octane garage!
Probably my only opportunity to ever make that joke, but you probably hear it all the time.
Oh geez, the ghosts if SIGraphs past,
https://youtu.be/X-mwyLitQcY
A clean garage is the sign of a wasted life
A clean garage is the sign of an effective wife. (I told YOU to clean up your room! ….garage)
I’m suspicious of people with empty garages…
That’s whats great about metal buildings they almost spawn themselves if are in an AG area.
What does “AG area” mean? Is that not having to pull a permit to put the building up or something like that?
Agriculture , essentially yes in a lot of AG zoned areas you don’t need permits and there are no inspections especially for what they consider an AG building. Alot of areas now will us satalite images to tax the building but again in most areas like that it won’t cost very much. They will throw up a metal building for you for cheap. Like a two car garage for $2k.
Ah, that makes sense so thanks M SV. I live within LA City limits, so I’m sure they’re not so laissez-faire about building construction/permits/taxes here. Besides, I’ve not got more than a few square meters of flat ground anywhwere on my property, so no room for anything bigger than the smallest shed. Such is the way of city life.
The trick is simply to have enough garage. At my place in Maine, I have 1400sq/ft for cars (and floorstanding tools), and another 1400sq/ft upstairs for crap. Most of the crap upstairs is not mine at this point, thankfully.
In Florida, in a few more months I will have 1000aq/ft for cars and tools, and a 300sq/ft storage loft for crap.
I believe you’re on the opposite coast from me. We’re in Deerfield Beach. We’re not in any sort of association community and I have recently discover that the zoning in my neighborhood allows for me to add a second floor to a section of the house. We’re thinking about it just to add storage/crafting/workshop space. Garage isn’t exactly packed now but the golf cart & lawn equipment takes up a decent amount of room. Is the loft in your new building like a full height usable mezzanine or just low height elevated storage? Staircase or ladder type access? Not trying to be nosey, just looking at ideas.
It’s an attached garage. 13′ wall on the house side, slopes to 9′ on the far side. So I’m putting a mezzanine/loft on the front half of the high side. Won’t be quite full stand-up height, but it will be fine for storage – should end up close to 6′ at the wall, but the ceiling will have a shallow slope. Going to have a folding staircase to it, or maybe a rolling ladder – haven’t entirely decided. Back half of the high side will be where the lift is going, and the garage is 28ft wide (36ft deep) so LOTS of room for storage down both sides and still have easy access to both sides of the cars.
The house itself is designed to solve the usual Florida problem of not enough storage too. 2bd/2ba, but each bedroom has a huge walk-in closet, plus good-sized regular closets, with the spare bedroom one also being a pass-through to the bathroom. So sort of a Jack ‘n Jill arrangement, but with it being the bedroom and the rest of the house. ~1500sq/ft house. Metal SIP construction, so super-insulated, and with a wind-rating that should see me through the worst if the area doesn’t get submerged. I’d put it on stilts if I could afford to do so.
Outstanding. We have a lot in the Rotonda that we’re considering building on. What you described sounds absolutely perfect for it.
I have 3 cars and a tow dolly and a 1.5 car garage the only car in the garage is the non running Fiat spider but I have a snowblower, rototiller, pressure washer, and tons of car parts in it.
When reading your comment, I saw rototiller as rottweiler and it made sense to me.
I would like to thank The Autopian.
I would like to thank an O’Reilly battery tender and Bosch fuel injection for my 914’s ability to sit for a year and then start on the first or second try.
I would like to thank my wife for letting me use a garage bay for this shit I never use, although it’s not like the nanny would be able to get the pickup in the garage anyway.
As some dead Brit once said: “You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.”
I’d like to thank William Goldman for writing such a great book/movie and Billy Crystal for delivering the line.
As you wish.
Am I the exception? I use my garage to house two cars….and a lot of junk.
Out here in southwest Minnesota where the winds really blow and hail too, we put as many wheeled vehicles inside as possible1 Had a warning for 100 MPH winds a couple weeks ago and jammed 4 cars, a small tractor, and two sidecar rigs into a 600 square foot garage. The eight motorcycles without sidecars rode out the storm in the living room…
This is why need the ability to post pictures
Agreed. I use imgur links for now (as in my comment after/above yours). Also: though not due to weather, I used to park my one not-much-ridden motorcycle in the downstairs living room just because it was nice to look at. 😉 Here’s a pic of it in its current garage spot: https://imgur.com/a/oyyKxvS
Just want to say on that auction photo, when I first saw it, I thought was somebody’s diecast model, maybe the filter or perspective but was kinda disappointed the article was about lame auction shenanigans, oh well, maybe next time it’ll be a cool diecast article as has been known to happen!
So, is that your garage? How far have you gotten on that old car you pulled from the weeds in North Carolina?
That was my garage as it was in 2021! I’m almost there on the Plymouth. Cleaned carb, cleaned tank, new points, but now I’m chasing no spark
Check resistance on coil and replace rotor in distributor. In the old days, rotors were always replaced with points. Good for you on rest of it. I bought a 68 Datsun Roadster 28 years ago and removed rear axles to replace wheel bearings. And so it sits 25 years later.
Check the low spark from high heeled boys…