Winnipeg’s Free Giveaway Weekend was a great success, apparently.

On Friday night (the event was supposed to start Saturday morning), we put out 5 old bicycles and two large plastic cabinets (sorta like this) that had been out in the backyard holding sports equipment. One of them had a broken door, so I put a bungie cord around it to keep it closed.

Within an hour or so, the unbroken cabinet was gone, along with the bungie cord holding the other one closed. I was cheesed. But, the other cabinet went shortly afterwards, broken door or not. Four of the five bikes were gone before we went to bed that night. The last bike went mid-afternoon on Saturday.

We went for a drive on Saturday morning and picked up a very nice wooden desk chair. We were specifically looking for a solid wood dresser, and found one that was missing a drawer. I got out and looked at it and figured I could easily make the missing drawer to match the others, and got ready to load it into the car. I folded down the wind-blown FREE sign, and saw that someone had scrawled on it “I want this, have gone to get my other car to pick it up.” Apparently they had taken the drawer to ensure no one else took it! First come first served does not work that way! We were *this* close to taking it anyway, just to be petty. But we decided to be an island of civility amidst the Mad Max freebie hunter chaos.

From what we saw in about two hours of driving around various neighbourhoods, Winnipeg basements are entirely filled with old computer monitors, printers, cheap exercise bikes, tiny particleboard desks, ratty computer chairs, and decrepit barbecues.

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