Scavenging

Salvaged Bricks, Last-Minute Bargains at New Berkeley Hotel

For reasons relating to one of our day jobs, we took a guided tour last week of Downtown Berkeley’s brand-new Hotel Shattuck Plaza, which is outfitted with eye-poppingly cool design elements and green technology.

To update a National Historical Landmark edifice that has housed guests since 1910, Kevin Davis of San Francisco’s Ziv Davis Interior & Architecture Studio chose black, white, and candy-apple red as the ground floor’s signal colors. The latter captivates in exuberant glass chandeliers that make you want simultaneously to laugh, love them, and bite off chunks to suck.

Black and white seize your attention the second you step through the front door, as the foyer’s marble floor tiles bear the shape of a peace sign four feet across. (The peace theme, a nod to Berkeley being Berkeley, is echoed in the hotel’s do-not-disturb signs, which say not Do Not Disturb but Peace, Please.) Black-and-white wallpaper in a bold postmodern-lace pattern graces the hotel’s organic restaurant-bar, Five, whose patrons eat three meals a day (selected from a menu that includes watermelon beer) under the 1910 structure’s original — and enormous — crystal chandelier.

Inserted into a slot just inside the door to each guestroom, that room’s key-card activates the LED overhead light, bedside lights, air conditioning, speaker phone, iHome, and flat-screen swivel-mounted TV. Remove the card and it all powers down: It’s an energy-saving strategy that is currently popular in Asian hotels but just catching on in the States, front-desk supervisor Matt Swenson told us. As for scavenging …. hundreds of bricks salvaged from the original structure during the two-year remodel will go into construction of the hotel’s new outdoor plaza.

It’s a very nice place and no Motel 6, which means that of course it’s not cheap. But Swenson told us that for a very limited time, bargain hunters can reserve double rooms at the Shattuck Plaza for only $98, which is about $40 off the regular price. You can only get the deal if you say you “saw it on Twitter,” and you can probably only get the deal through July.

Planning a visit to the Bay Area?

Villagers Fret Over Tons of Scavenged Artillery

Hundreds of thousands of scavenged bullets are raising a ruckus in China.

According to the Shanghai Daily, steel-mill owner Yang Changchun collected hundreds of thousands of spent bullets from an arsenal with plans to recycle them at his mill into other steel products. But first he wanted the bullets to be washed, so he dumped them on a roadside that runs beside a river near Chongqing, sparking widespread alarm.

“The bullets, estimated to weigh 30 tons, covered one-third of a road in Wanshou Village….

“Villagers were worried that the bullets could be used for evil purposes.

“Police officers were also stunned at the sight of so many bullets and told the newspaper they were unaware of such a deal between the arsenal and mill. They are investigating the case.

“According to Chinese gun management regulations, police are the only authorized body to destroy guns. Civilians are banned from using guns.

“Yang’s workers were seen washing the bullets at the roadside river. The cleaned bullets will be sent to Yang’s mill to be recycled into steel products, they said. The workers had been cleaning the bullets for four days….

“Yang’s mill had previously been punished by the local government for making poor quality steel products.”

No Death Penalty for Garage-Sale Killer

It’s always sad when a scavenging venue is involved in a double homicide.

According to Seattle TV station KOMO, 52-year-old Charles W. Nettlebeck (seen at left in a KOMO photo) killed his wife and stepdaughter with an axe during preparations for a garage sale he was to hold with them the next day in Orting, Washington. Today a Pierce County prosecutor announced that he would not seek the death penalty in the March murders, based on Nettlebeck’s history of mental-health issues.

“Nettlebeck earlier told detectives he tried to hang himself at his home after attacking his wife and stepdaughter, court documents said. His suicide attempt failed, however, and he went on a spray-painting rampage leaving messages in red that said, ‘Could not find help. No where to go’ and ‘I loved my wife — for better or worst,’ detectives said.

“According to court documents, Nettlebeck’s wife had a restraining order against him and was in the process of getting a divorce. But, despite the order, he went to his wife’s home in Orting on Friday, March 13, to participate in a garage sale.

“It was not clear exactly what prompted the attack, but prosecutors allege Nettlebeck’s wife said something to him, and he picked up an axe and struck her with it, nearly decapitating her.

“After hitting his wife, Nettlebeck went outside, found Hawkins and hit her three times with the axe, the documents said.

“Nettlebeck finally called 911 roughly three hours after the killings, prosecutors said.

“When deputies arrived at the home in the 27200 block of 168th Avenue Court East, Nettlebeck’s wife was already dead and Hawkins was critically injured. Hawkins was rushed to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle where she later died.”

Designer Thrift Shop Set to Sell Prada, Dior, Lacroix

A thrift shop devoted only to high-end designer wear is opening soon in Edinburgh, Scotland. Its racks, we read in the Sunday Mail, will be studded with Prada, Dior and Christian Lacroix.

Currently being designed with the help of British TV personality Mary Portas, aka “Mary Queen of Shops,” the
Save The Children boutique is set to open in September, and “will have stock donated by designers, celebrities and top retailers.” Portas (depicted above) helped launch a charity shop in London earlier this year, and her fame has been bringing much-needed money to the Save the Children charity as well as long-overdue dignity to the British secondhand-shopping scene.

“Among the treasure trove is a Nicole Farhi dress originally worth £400, Russell and Bromley biker boots which cost £325 and a Swarovski watch which sold new at £120.

“Interest in the store is growing by the day and Save The Children bosses expect a stampede when it opens.”

Portas says she hopes it will “redefine charity shops,” and that “its real success will be defined by the extent to which it changes the way people in Edinburgh shop. We want to create a real buzz, something unique.”

And: “Stock for the shop will be of the highest calibre and the store itself will have the feel of a fancy and contemporary designer boutique….

“The bargains in the new store will be second to none. I imagine people from all over Scotland will be flocking to Edinburgh to snap up deals at the poshest charity shop in Britain.”

The Trash Museums of New England

Connecticut has two garbage museums! Operated by the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, the Hartford Trash Museum and the Stratford Garbage Museum aim to illustrate how much the average person throws away and how much of that so-called “trash” could be rescued, repurposed and reused.

At the Hartford space, 6,500 square feet of educational exhibits include “the Temple of Trash.”

According to the Stratford Star, “Greeting visitors at the door [of the Stratford space] is Trash-o-saurus, a ton of items recovered by a Pennsylvania artist to represent waste generated by a person each year.” Nearby, “two cones represent the amount of raw material needed to produce soda cans. The amount of recycled cans is dwarfed by the sizable cone representing the quantity of raw bauxite that would have to be mined for the same yield. The recycling process itself remains a large draw. On one side of a window-lined walkway, trucks and payloaders move piles of empty plastic bottles and aluminum cans some 20 feet tall. On the other side, conveyor belts ferry materials past workers who sort the items by category.” Also, according to the CRRA’s website, “Guests can walk through a giant compost pile.” Freaky!

Check out strategies for keeping the place open at the Save the Stratford, CT Garbage Museum blog.

The museums are seeking donations — of cash, not trash.

700-Year-Old Skull Raises Questions

A human skull found on an Australian beach is turning into one of this year’s greatest scavenging mysteries. According to the Courier Mail, the skull — which was “found washed up on Mona Vale Beach” near Sydney “10 months ago is an astonishing 700 years old and is not of Aboriginal origin.”

The skull clearly appeared old, and “radiocarbon-dating carried out in New Zealand has determined the skull dates from around 1300 AD. During early investigations, anthropologists ruled out the possibility of it being an indigenous skull, but its age predates European arrival on the east coast by 500 years.”

So if Europeans weren’t in or near Australia circa 1300, and it isn’t Aboriginal, whose could it be? Were sailors from Asia able to reach this area? Why did the skull take seven hundred years to wash up?

Bad Economy Kills Even Thrift Shops

We all know that lots of businesses have been forced to close because of this tanking economy. Well, even thrift shops are dropping like flies. The Salvation Army in Berkeley, California, was one recent casualty. Cleveland.com has this story about another, in Ohio. Its headline is “Economy Closing Noble Road Thrift Store”:

“Marcie Coleman loves her store, and her customers have become like her family.

“‘I’ve spent some of the happiest moments of my life here,’ she said. But after about five years in the business, Coleman, 55, is reluctantly preparing to close the doors of her thrift store,” which is called Perfectionist.

“She will have items on sale until mid-July, but has started donating extra items to local charities.”

She also held a yard sale on July 4 to unload many items.

“Deciding to close the store was a difficult choice for Coleman, but mounting debt and the prospect of filing for bankruptcy gave her little choice.

“‘It was never about the money for me,’ Coleman said. ‘As long as the store could pay its bills and I could pay my help I was fine.’ But she can’t do that anymore. She is just another victim of the economy, she said.

“‘The store just isn’t making what it needs to make to stay afloat,’ she said.

“Coleman’s store sells a variety of thrift items, most of which she purchases at auctions. She sells clothing, appliances, shoes, movies, household items and toys. She also does office services including faxing, copying and notarizing. The store also sells snacks and pop.