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The 'Eternal' Brick & Other Anomalous Urban Objects

thats possibly due to the postmen
 
It's the Royal Mail. The posties throw away millions of them every year as they walk their rounds. Boring, I know, but there you go.

Merlin :lol:
 
James H said:
I have seen red rubber bands (something I don't see that often) on the floor almost everywhere I go for some months now.
Click to expand...
I think I can explain that one! The post office use red rubber bands now to bundle up letters for roads/streets/flats/etc. (They were common old brown bands in my postie days!)

We often get our shop mail delivered still in in red rubber bands - we collect them, and sometimes use them to hold together customer purchases!

So the ones you see are those discarded by posties as they make their deliveries.

[EDIT: Shucks - beaten to it!]
 
I have noticed that at college, near the smoking shelter, about 3 weeks ago I saw a large screw (I remember because I saw it and made a pun, pointing at it, I asked my friend "Fancy a screw?"). It stayed there for about 4 days and everytime i saw I giggled a little at my puerile joke. On the fifth day, it had gone. Just dissappeared. This morning I went to the smoking shelter, for a smoke, as you do and the screw was back in exactly the same place I had seen it 3 weeks ago. I will be sure to keep you guys posted on the screws movements in the future.
 
Just got home from college. I had a look around today and the screw was still in the same place. I brought this to the attention of a few friends. They can't explain it either, some of them think it's a genuine mystery whereas some are a bit cynical.
 
As no one has brought it up yet - I will add a link to the streetmattress.com website. It tells you all about dead mattresses on the street.

It has also been called "the worlds most useless website". I might also have put in in the "Pointless Endeavours" thread :)
 
uair01 the world needs more people like you,
if there were then things would be a hell of a lot better.
 
Just got to college. The screw is still there but has moved slightly
 
thanks melf, merlin, rynner, that solves that one :D
 
And don't forget gloves!!!! I see alot of rubber gloves at the side of the road too, as well as shoes and combs.
 
Rubber gloves! :shock:

For some reason that sounds sinister to me.

Dib
 
Seems to me the only thing "Fortean" about any of this is the deep and abiding mystery of why people can't dispose of their *@%#& trash properly.
 
I would say the Fortean/ mystery is obvious. Of all the trash there is to throw away, we keep seeing these same objects: shoes, socks, combs ( and sometimes gloves).

If it was "just trash", we would see everything.
 
Well, I don’t encounter combs, rubber bands, gloves, socks, bottles of curdling milk or grape Fruitopia.

I do see the occasional brick, shoe, and discarded mattress, and there is a local spot where a great number of shoes dangle from the telephone wires.

What I mostly see in great abundance everywhere I go is discarded plastic drink containers, fast food wrappers, empty plastic bags, cigarette butts, hub caps, and random articles of clothing. I have always just interpreted these patterns of observation as evidence of the slovenliness of my fellow Americans who can’t be bothered to find a trash can. But perhaps my interpretation has been overly simplistic and wedded to the predominant rational-reductionist paradigm? Revealing yet again the subtle yet pernicious power of one's cultural conditioning to constrain the mind and the thought process!

Given that there is indeed a Fortean phenomenon at work here, then one is confronted with the puzzle that although certain patterns of found objects do seem to generally recur, they also display a strange, almost perverse variation from one observer to another. With further study, it may well emerge that the pattern of objects encountered varies as a function of the observer’s geographic location and corresponding dominant cultural milieu, which some authors assert is also true of UFOs. An exhaustive literature search might also reveal whether these patterns change over time. But of course, the skeptics will debunk it all and no mainstream university or research institution will ever display the courage or intellectual integrity to give such research the funding it deserves. Another lost opportunity to deepen man’s understanding of the mysterious cosmos we inhabit.
 
Dib said:
Rubber gloves! :shock:

For some reason that sounds sinister to me.

Dib
Click to expand...

Dib - I used to have a vegetable garden (an allotment for those in the UK) a few years ago and I regularly found rubber gloves in it. Never a pair and usually the right hand one!!!
 
in new haven, you will see expensive , brand new boots hanging from the phone wires, often with the tags still on them.
i think gangs do this to mark their "turf" and an especially profitable one will put expensive shoes up there to show off.
 
Incubus said:
Just got to college. The screw is still there but has moved slightly
Click to expand...

How far and in what direction? Is it able to roll? Is the ground level? Is there any evidence that it has been moved by someone?

Can we perhaps get some kind of photo of this screw?

Perhaps set up a webcam...
 
Discarded

It's the unravelled cassette tapes that get me - I've noticed loads over the years, wrapped up in hedges, trees etc. I've removed a few, otherwise they stay there for years, really noticable cos they catch the light and don't seem to decompose.

I'd like to stop and remove one that I see every time I drive into Gateshead, but it's by a motorway, and not exactly easy to get to.

It makes you wonder - was a passenger so pissed off by the driver's choice of music that they felt compelled to pull the tape out and unravel it, or if you could listen to them, would they contain some incriminating record of a conversation?

I guess I spend too much time driving in my current job.....
 
Re: Discarded

lily lodestone said:
It's the unravelled cassette tapes that get me - I've noticed loads over the years, wrapped up in hedges, trees etc. I've removed a few, otherwise they stay there for years, really noticable cos they catch the light and don't seem to decompose.
Click to expand...

Increasingly rare nowdays.

And yes. We do have a thread on everything here:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... torder=asc
 
I'm not the only idiot who makes web pages about weird garbage, look here :p

BTW: I found this link in the book "505 unbelievably stupid web p@ges" by Dan Crowley. I can recommend it!

Welcome to Pavementgear.com
Your Internet source for crap found by the road.

We've all seen it. We spend countless hours in our cars and in most cases, stuck in traffic. With nothing left to do, your eyes wander around the roadsides in search of something to look at.

That's when you see it. It may be a pair of shoes or perhaps a shirt..but it's there and there is no reasonable explanation for why it's there.

http://www.pavementgear.com/index.htm
 
The Yithian said:
How far and in what direction? Is it able to roll? Is the ground level? Is there any evidence that it has been moved by someone?

Can we perhaps get some kind of photo of this screw?

Perhaps set up a webcam...
Click to expand...

It has moved quite a distance. I'm not sayin there is anything weird about this because anyone could have moved it. It is a smoking shelter after all. I'm just keeping anyone who's interested posted on the whereabouts of the screw.
 
Have been on the M25 today and saw on the outside lane an eggwhisk, one of those old(ish) fashioned ones with the handle to spins the two interlocking whisks. Now shoes, gloves and the like I can kind of understand but an eggwhisk???...who the hell rides around with an eggwhisk in their car that can go flying out of the window????
 
i can lay claim to the egg whisk- transporting a load of junk from my parents' house back down to london, the boot flew open on the M25... I'm also missing a salad spinner and a whole stack of ladels, wooden spoons etc
 
An update of weird urban objects - and how long they last in the urban jungle:

Shoes:

These ones didn't last for even one night. Next day they were gone (Rotterdam Central Station):
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_shoes.jpg

The same for these ones. And I was surprised to see them a few days after I read the "shoes in trees" article in Fortean Times. That was a nice coincidence. (The Hague Central Station):
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_shoes02.jpg

Chairs:

This is some kind of art project. But the chairs are in almost constant use by the taxi-drivers who wait here. So they're always under surveillance. They have lasted for two weeks now. I think they will last a long time. (Rotterdam Central Station)
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_chair01.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_chair02.jpg

Each day they are in a different configuration. The paint has started to peel from one. Probably a quick-and-dirty spraypaint job:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_chairs03.jpg

Sweets:

Someone has placed a row of marching sweets in a crack between the bricks. I think they've lasted for at least a week now (The Hague Hollands Spoor):
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_sweets01.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_sweets02.jpg

"Missing" poster:

This one fell from the tree after heavy rain, but it stayed up for almost two weeks. I can still see the poster in several places in Rotterdam.
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_missing.jpg

Oil lamp:

This must be some homeless' persons property. But it's a romantic and unusual object that I discovered this week. I must go and take a look if it's still there:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_lamp01.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/object_lamp02.jpg

Hope you've been entertained :?
 
I'll have to get my friend down in Bovey Tracey (Devon - England) to send me a photo of the bike IN the tree! It is an old old bike that was left in the fork between two brances/trunks and has now nearly been absorbed as the tree has grown. Must be at least 50 - 60 years of tree growth!
It is in a little wooded area near a pond, which always seems slightly eerie (Though not frightening, it just has an energy about the place).

Will keep you posted.
 
Great - would love to see it! Near me there's a postbox in a tree (the tree has grown round it) which is brilliant.
 
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