Urban Ore is a gold mine of quirk.
Its purpose is printed on every receipt – To End the Age of Waste. It started in 1980, recovering and trading resources from the City of Berkeley’s landfill.
A scavenger with a mission! It has grown, evolved, and moved. Reuse! Recyle!
Photo by Pete Rosos, Berkeleyside
I associate Urban Ore with co-founder Dan Knapp. A few years ago his grandchild and my youngest daughter were good friends. I had good long talks with him about Urban Ore sitting at his daughter’s kitchen table in University Village.
The long rows of toilets and doors and sinks in the Building Materials Department are not without a quirky charm, but they are not the point of this exercise. The point here – the mostly big, quirky stuff in the Salvaging and Recycling Department. Some may be for sale, some not. Instant DIY quirky though –
A few months after this visit to Urban Ore, I saw the dog at the Oakland home of BAD RAP pit bull rescue, the statue having been rescued by Donna Reynolds and Tim Racer – about whom I will post in the very near future.
When I showed these photos to my friend he smiled. “I gigged for Warner Brothers prop department for a few months in the summer of ’74. Couldn’t focus though. Too much cool stuff. Reminds me of Urban Ore. Don’t think I could focus there.”
I remembered his short stint with Warner Brothers. What was his overall impression of the photos?
