Charles - have you been here? I received this email from my son-in-law, Eddie North-Hager, who lives in Liemert Park - they were on a walking LA Bridge tour:
"This is a vacuum gathering place east of the Los Angeles River north of the 4th Street bridge. At first I thought of these vacuums as hobos waiting to ride the rails, the outcast of society. but now I see them and think of man's inhumanity to man. Oh the humanity."

and am not sure exactly where it is. Can you give me directions on how to find it? Is it in an area accessible to the public? I would be going east toward downtown, from the west side.

I have sent an "off thread" email to Eddie asking him to give you coordinates.

My "Man in L.A.", Eddie North-Hager, has provided me with "off thread" directions to these vacs that I passed to the fearless Doctor Lester. I received a recent message from Charles Richard that he had located the machines and would be providing a report. I hope he doesn't get mugged down there.

Please stand by.

I've often thought that the east end of downtown Los Angeles would be a perfect place to shoot a horror movie. The desolate looking area consists of row after row of block-long, block-wide, faceless, nameless, windowless warehouses, many of them from the 1920s and 1930s. Most of them have little or no external identification -- in some cases not even street address numbers.

The only markings on many of the buildings is graffitti -- lots of it; layer upon layer of multicolored swirls and taggings that define the competition of this area for gang turf.

On any given day, a variety of puzzling and often nauseating odors waft about the area. Vague, unidentifiable scents -- faint, but unpleasant nonetheless. Especially not knowing the source but suspecting it is something organic -- e.g., the byproduct of animal rendering. Yeck.

A large, four-row train track bisects the area but one hardly ever sees any trains moving on the main tracks -- although the Metroliner whizzes by on its own tracks over and further away from the main tracks. You hardly ever see many people moving about. They're all cloistered inside the huge warehouses, doing whatever kind of stuff they do in there.

With a little imagination, these huge, anonymous, monolithic structures can be turned into Soylent Green processing plants, or human slauhterhouses run by evil outer-space aliens preparing "imported meat" to take back to their starving planet, or even industrial-scale "Hannibal Lector" horror-houses where all sorts of unspeakable atrocities are committed upon victims entrapped therein.

Many of these enormous warehouses are actually produce processing plants. Some are manufacturing plants; some are sweatshop garment producers; and some are occupied by people -- artsy loft dwelling types. And, yes, some of them are animal rendering plants. Did I say Yeck?!

You don't really even see a lot of homeless people in this area; they are more concentrated further west near downtown L.A. itself -- Skid Row is further west and south from the heavy industry area I am talking about --- known generally as Boyle Heights. Which just gives this area an even-more mysterious feel. The only humans you really see are the occasional warehouse workers standing on a dock smoking a cigarette or yapping on cell phones in some mysyterious unintellible language --- you just don't see people coming and going from these places.

It was into this vaguely foreboding, quietly unsettling setting that I embarked upon a little exploratory adventure today.

(I actually do go into this area every so often. There are two really great, really enormous thrift shops near there that I check out every so often. One of the thrift shops is just absolutely enormous --- huge "departments" for different types of merchandise. One "department" consists of row after row of deserted pianos and organs -- dozens and dozens of them!)

After seeing the intriguing photo that Mark Goodall posted here, I just had to drive out there to see about this pile of abandonded vacuum cleaners! I am sorry to say that I totally forgot about bringing a camera, and I sure wish I had done so.

I drove across town, over the First Street bridge, turned onto Mission and then onto Myers. I parked my car and walked east along the train tracks, per Mark's direction.

And there I found it.

A literal vacuum cleaner graveyard, with maybe thirty or forty discarded vacuum cleaners. My immediate thought was that some vac shop had been dumping them there because the cord were cut off all of them. Who else would do that but a vac shop, cutting the cords off (a) a token gesture most vac shops do, to render the machines useless and (b) to keep all those cords from getting tangled up into an enormous mess!

I did a little more walking, and came to a pile of large Kirby cartons -- many of them -- Classic, Omega, III, Heritage, Legend, and the various G-series machines. And scattered piles of attachments, attachment boxes, bags, and sani-emptors in a variety of colors and models. Unfortunately, all this stuff has been outside for quite some time, exposed to the elements. So all the boxes were sun bleached and at some point had been rained on or water soaked. There was nothing there worth taking.

Seeing all these Kirby boxes and Kirby parts made me think that perhaps this stuff had been dumped there by a Kirby dealer, but I had no way of knowing that for sure other than educated guessing and speculating.

I did gingerly poke around into a couple of the boxes, but that curiosity was nipped in the bud when the BIGGEST F@#&ING SPIDER that I have ever seen in real life came scampering out of one of them! It was not a tarantula -- not a hairy spider I mean -- it was more like a garden spider on steroids. Honestly, that thing - counting its legs - was as big as the palm of my hand! It was so big at first that it took a split second to register that it really was a spider! But another split second later -- with a screech in a high register I had no idea I was capable of reaching!

I jumped backwards out of the mound of boxes, papers, weeds, discarded clothes and mattresses and back onto the sold ground next to the railroad tracks! My interest in the content of those boxes diminished quite suddenly! Especially when I considered the possibility that the place was CRAWLING with them!!!!!!!!!!!

I walked very rapidly back to my car, with harried contemplations of what other sorts of overgrown wildlife there may be lurking out there. On the way, I saw a small rug renovator box with papers and stuff sticking out of it sort of sitting off to the side all by itself. I wondered it the papers may identify the source of the machines.

I picked up a long stick and vigorously thumped the box with it, then gingerly turned the box with the end of the stick, and then thoroughly poked and prodded through the papers with it to make sure there were no more gigantic spiders hiding in there! Satisfied that the coast was clear, I rifled through the papers.

A pad of bilingual (English/Spanish) credit applications.

A ruled note pad with prospect names and phone numbers listed.

A stack of xeroxed Kirby G5 brochures.

And ... EUREKA! The mother lode of my detective work: An envelope addressed to ... "THE KIRBY COMPANY OF PASADENA."

So, my detective work proved that my hunch was right! Not only was the stuff dumped by a vac shop, it was, as I suspected, a Kirby dealer! How or why all this stuff ended way out here from Pasadena -- which is quite a bit more than a stone's throw -- is anyone's guess. But there it was.

Oh, about the vacuum cleaners -- they were, every single one, upright plastic junk. Disemboweled Eureka Bravos, Bissels, Dirt Devils, ugly Hoover Concepts, etc. The one interesting thing was a Lux 3000 Upright that appeared to be in perfecty good condition, other than the fact that the cord had been amputated. I carefully extracted the bag from it and returned it to the sweeper pile, made sure nothing was hiding in the bag chamber, and brought it to my car. If it's any good, I'll clean it up and probably put it on eBay!

Then I got back into my car and drove home.

All in all, it was an enjoyable and fun adventure, other than the spider from hell! One of these days I will go back out there to take some photos and see what else may show up there. I'll be sure to bring a can of Raid and a big fly swatter with me when I return!

==============

RELEVANT LINKS:

http://www.srv.net/~dkv/hobospider/
http://www.onewest.net/~dkv/hobospider/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViWAvFYjRk8
(THIS is what the spider looked like!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

[I couldn't find any good photos of the L.A./Boyle Heights Warehouse District. Sorry.]

that I did not run into THIS spider! (see photo)

yikes!!!

Hey Charlie???

Would you post a picture of the lux...or email me privetly I am interest in the lux upright!!

Kyle

Oh the humanity indeed! Do I see a Hoover Convertible in the far left of the photo? Charlie, did you see any remnants of the Kirby uprights themselves? Do you think this Kirby dealer is still dumping down there?

It is about 1/3 from the left, and 3/4 from the top. Looks like a G-model. Can't tell what type; I am much more interested in the old models! :-)

I spy...

that green Hoover about a 1/3 from the right? We used to have one! That was one of the first vacuums I remember; it stunk to high heavens! I hated that vacuum...Now we have a nice, non-smelly Air-Way! Yay!

My God, you're right! It's a Kirby G4! Hope somebody rescues that one. I cringe every time a Kirby is discarded, regardless of age....

Gosh, just to think that someone could be using that right now! Like you or me! I love Kirby's so much, and just to see one wasted really hurts! Especially when it is relatively new! Oh, well... Maybe Mr. Charles Lester, the Vacuum Hero, can rescue it! Maybe, just maybe, he could send it to a good home!

Indeed, even if the tech-drive (or motor) is frozen, there are still lots of useable parts, like the TCV nozzle, the housing, mini-emtor, and handle assembly. I will always stop the car to pick up a Kirby, all-metal Royal, Electrolux, or an Oreck. They're just too good to see cast off. Not too long ago, a neighbor of mine threw away a 1949 GE AVF-26 upright, nothing wrong with it, just old. Sad really....

I had the chance to go to Air-Way Vacuums (vac shop) today, and got to see a lot of mistreated vacuums; not from the repairman, but from the customers! This one lady brought in an okay looking Legend II. However, it was in somewhat pieces. The brush roll was disconnected from the nozzle, and she complained that the red light was not turning off. I tried to help her out, as Billy, the repairman, was helping another customer. I saw that the plastic ends had melted, and that the melted plastic had gotten where the screws were. I knew then she had put it in the incorrect way. She said she had no clue how it went together. Then, I tried to turn the brush roll: ALL LOCKED UP!! I looked at the shaft, and the end was black, as in burnt rubber. The belt was new, she said. Then, Billy came over there and saw the same things I did. Then he asked probably the most important question: "When did you last have it looked at?" The reply: "I haven't." So, Billy told her that he would keep it and get it checked on. The brush roll would be $35, and the check-up would be I think $20. The lady said to him that she needed it to vacuum her rugs. I can hardly not get mad at those who treat their vacuums poorly! It hurts me to see that picture! :-) I had a good time helping out Billy while he was helping me! (He rebuilt me an Air-Way hose, Omega hose, and gave me some attachments for the Air-Way.)