If you drive through a lot of small towns in the American west (east of California, such as Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Northern Arizona/New Mexico) you can often find some real fascinating relics of time like this. Depending on the area you get a little different era. In the southwest you can find a lot of cool stufef from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and early 80s. Up north is more 80s and 90s and early 00s.
One I really enjoyed seeing is a little ghost "town" in Southern Idaho that I had a blast exploring a couple years ago. It was a gas station, a restaurant, and a couple of houses and a small warehouse off the interstate a bit. It went out of business decades ago and was abandoned. It's remote enough that vandalism has been minimal (though certainly existent), so some things look fairly "pristine" the way they were last left. Seeing the desk in the office, with filing cabinet and desktop corded phone was a real nostalgia kick. There was a box that had clearly been picked through that I'm sure would have contained a lot of treasures. I found a barely readable instruction manual for a dot-matrix printer that would have been neat to see. You do have to be very careful because there are lots of sharp object galore, especially broken glass.
Local "wildlife" has also been in and out once the door stopped staying closed, but for the most part it is just scratch marks (that could have been done by dogs or cats). The bathroom is a toxic bio-hazard though, so don't go in there. People clearly kept using for many years, long after the water was shut off.... Overall was a really fun experience. If you decide to explore though, be aware of where you go because a lot of old-looking stuff that might seem abandoned, actually isn't (it just hasn't been maintained), and usually the owners aren't too welcoming of trespassers.
Little town of Washington Iowa has a closed cafe, Wingas, that was a 40's-style cafe (actually opened in 1940) that simply closed their doors in 2018. When the old couple retired they just locked the doors and went home. And there it sits.
You can see the napkin dispensers on the tables, the dishes on a shelf behind the counter. The colorful booths and light fixtures, a little dust but it's been airless and closed up. After 78 years in operation. A lot of nostalgia there.
I don't remember exactly where it was at this point unfortunately. When I found it, I was exploring South of i-84, east of Burley, west of where i-84 splits to head south to salt lake (and the northern route becomes i-86 to Pocatello).
On the same excursion I drove through Albion. I was hoping to find a good place to camp in those mountains, as well as a more interesting route south to Utah. I think I was north of Albion, but I'm not certain, and looking at the map, nothing stands out. I wish I had paid closer attention. As insane as it sounds now, at the time I didn't really think a whole lot of the experience. I originally stopped hoping to find a bathroom because of an urgent biological need, and that's when I discovered that the gas station was permanently closed. I checked a couple of buildings looking for a bathroom and that's when I noticed that everything was completely abandoned. At that point my curiosity took over and I started looking around, but I was actually pretty nervous at the time because there was a recent news article that had talked about how squatters were taking up residence in abandoned buildings in southern Idaho. I didn't want to stumble upon somebody who may be very displeased with having been discovered, who might feel the need to physically defend their territory. There were also some "The Hills Have Eyes" type of vibes that did not help any with the comfort lol.
Toilets are an interesting invention. It seems like we have an instinct to want to shit in the same place every time. Toilets are one of those old inventions that I can't imagine ever uninventing. The people who are around 500 years from now will still want to shit in the same place every day. I suppose when we were nomadic then we'd designate a corner of the cave for all of us to go shit in. Maybe the instinct has lasted so long because it's so closely related to disease. For example, our instinctual hatred for the smell of shit is highly functional at disease prevention. Perhaps the desire to shit in a designated corner, away from our usual activities, has a similar functional basis. (I don't know enough about evolution to know whether I'm, well, talking out of my ass.)
How so? I accept stories about time capsules from any location. Just below is a comment from Holland. Less weird?
Americans probably make up a larger portion of HN visitors (especially in the currently awake time zone), and it is also a very big country, so stories from there are more likely overall.
Why is that weird? HN is a global community, and antiques are something that exist pretty much everywhere on Earth, people who are interested in them also exist pretty much everywhere on Earth. It's hard to even think of a more universal and culture spanning topic than antiques. I would think it a lot more weird if only people from the UK cared and commented about TFA.
Nevertheless, if you think it's wrong and only people from the UK should read and/or comment about a story from the UK, how do we accomplish that? Should we start putting country code tags on all of the posts, so that way only people from specific countries read and comment on them?
When I was a teenager, my curiosity led me to do urban exploring, so I felt a lot more pulled in by freedomben's story than the one about cordless phones. If there were photos, it'd definitely be blog post worthy. Although that might spoil the visuals my imagination has already created. For example, I remember visiting Pleasure Beach and exploring all the dollhouses in that ghost town which was abandoned when the bridge burned down. I remember feeling so afraid when I discovered that one guy was still living there, just sitting back and forth in his rocking chair. I also think Bridgeport, having so long been a beacon of American values, teaches us what we can expect from America in the future once more critical infrastructure breaks down.
It is weird that there is still no obvious comments about abundance of such objects in Japan (with fan community around them), or from even bigger “urban exploration” crowd.
Is it weird? HN's largest audience is American. The next largest is probably Europe. I'd be surprised if the percentage of Japanese users on HN was high enough to break into the single digit range.
Edit: My assumption seems close, Japan is at 1% based on this. I'm surprised.
One I really enjoyed seeing is a little ghost "town" in Southern Idaho that I had a blast exploring a couple years ago. It was a gas station, a restaurant, and a couple of houses and a small warehouse off the interstate a bit. It went out of business decades ago and was abandoned. It's remote enough that vandalism has been minimal (though certainly existent), so some things look fairly "pristine" the way they were last left. Seeing the desk in the office, with filing cabinet and desktop corded phone was a real nostalgia kick. There was a box that had clearly been picked through that I'm sure would have contained a lot of treasures. I found a barely readable instruction manual for a dot-matrix printer that would have been neat to see. You do have to be very careful because there are lots of sharp object galore, especially broken glass. Local "wildlife" has also been in and out once the door stopped staying closed, but for the most part it is just scratch marks (that could have been done by dogs or cats). The bathroom is a toxic bio-hazard though, so don't go in there. People clearly kept using for many years, long after the water was shut off.... Overall was a really fun experience. If you decide to explore though, be aware of where you go because a lot of old-looking stuff that might seem abandoned, actually isn't (it just hasn't been maintained), and usually the owners aren't too welcoming of trespassers.