It's kind of lonely around my neighborhood now that Washington University has let out for the summer. We live on a major student thoroughfare and typically see a steady stream of kids traveling to and from the campus, but have the place all to ourselves in the steamy months ahead while the student body returns home to summer jobs and hometown friends.

A curious sideshow to this annual rite can be found in the local dumpster divers who use this changing of the guard as an opportunity to furnish and modernize their own homes with the remnants of these transient residents. These not-too-proud opportunists range from the lowly homeless guy who routinely visits these receptacles to the gaggle of Asian cooperatives who descend upon these unmanned garage sales like the Sand People of Star Wars. This latter operation proves a greater spectacle given the orchestrated nature of their process. They move in bands and make quick work of a bounty but unfortunately, like copulating squirrels, these projects are a not often witnessed given their skilled and organized methodology.