The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

By Julian Montague

A taxonomy we didn’t know we needed for identifying and cataloging stray shopping carts by artist and photographer Julian Montague.

Abandoned shopping carts are everywhere, and yet we know so little about them. Where do they come from? Why are they there? Their complexity and history baffle even the most careful urban explorer.
 
Thankfully, artist Julian Montague has created a comprehensive and well-documented taxonomy with The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America. Spanning thirty-three categories from damaged, fragment, and plow crush to plaza drift and bus stop discard, it is a tonic for times defined increasingly by rhetoric and media and less by the plain objects and facts of the real world. Montague’s incomparable documentation of this common feature of the urban landscape helps us see the natural and man-made worlds—and perhaps even ourselves—anew.
 
First published in 2006 to great perplexity and acclaim alike, Montague’s book now appears in refreshed and expanded form. Told in an exceedingly dry voice, with full-color illustrations and photographs throughout, it is both rigorous and absurd, offering a strangely compelling vision of how we approach, classify, and understand the environments around us. A new afterword sheds light on the origins of the project.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Oct 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9780226829852

Book preview

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2006, 2023 by Julian Montague

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2023

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-82910-4 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-82985-2 (e-book)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226829852.001.0001

Originally published in 2006 by Abrams Image, an imprint of Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Any questions concerning permissions should be directed to the Permissions Department at the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Montague, Julian, photographer, author.

Title: The stray shopping carts of Eastern North America : a guide to field identification / Julian Montague.

Description: Revised edition. | Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2023.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022061358 | ISBN 9780226829104 (paperback) | ISBN 9780226829852 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Montague, Julian. | Photography, Artistic. | Shopping carts—North America—Pictorial works.

Classification: LCC TR655 .M66 2023 | DDC 770—dc23/eng/20230119

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022061358

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America A Guide to Field Identification

Revised Edition

Julian Montague

The University of Chicago Press

For Veronica

The 2006 edition of this book was preceded by six years spent developing and exhibiting the Stray Shopping Cart project. I would like to thank the various organizations and institutions that have given me opportunities to further this work: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, New York; Big Orbit/Soundlab, Buffalo, New York; the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York, New York; Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut; the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York; and Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio. Special thanks to Tatyana Okshteyn/Black & White Gallery. Thanks to my parents and extended family for their general enthusiasm for this project over the years. Thanks to M. for being there at the very beginning and to Colette for being there during the critical years of this project. Thanks to Masashi Yabe for wandering through the ruins with me and helping so much with the first installation. Thanks to my cousin Toby Montague for all his unpaid labor in the summer of 2005 working on the first edition of this book. Special thanks to Michael Baumann for his help with the first few shopping cart installations and, most laboriously, the cart pieces at Socrates Sculpture Park in 2008. Thanks to Kristen Gasser for helping me with editing at the very beginning and to Neil Wechsler for his help this time around. True thanks to all the Cafe Taza/Intersection freaks. And of course, extra special thanks to my wife, Emma, and to my daughter, Veronica (who will probably have to talk more about stray shopping carts than the average person).

Contents

Preface

SECTION 1: Introduction

Concepts / Terminology

Notes on Identification

Geographic Relevance

Hypothetical Transitional Sequences

SECTION 2: Class A: False Strays

SECTION 3: Class B: True Strays

SECTION 4: Selected Specimens

SECTION 5: A Simple Vandalism Site Study

SECTION 6: A Complex Vandalism Site Study

Afterword (2023)

Appendix: Related Phenomena

Preface

At the time of this writing it has been 23 years since the research for The Stray

Reviews for The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America

[bness2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The essential guide to shopping carts and their complex ecology. Although this is a guide to the shopping carts of Eastern North America, it is clearly useful in Western North America as well. No other book is as comprehensive in it's treatment of shopping cart natural history. Never go into the field without it.

[setnahkt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The study of taxonomy is full of surprises. During a summer’s field work in the Adirondacks, my adviser and I devoted our lunches to a phylogenetic classification of McDonaldland Cookies. (Note: these are the 1970s cookies – current cookies seem to belong to a different kingdom):Cursory observation will note that most of the cookie characters display segmentation (in this case, multiple buns), a feature observed otherwise in the annelids, arthropods, and chordates. There is massive cephalization, an observed trend in arthropods (compare, for example, the imputed primitive crustacean Hutchinsoniella with, say, crabs). But where to go from there? Is Phil A. O’Fish an ancestral marine form or a derived return to the water, like cetaceans? Is the hat, seen on Mayor McCheese, Big Mac the Cop, and the Hamburglar, a shared common characteristic or an example of convergent evolution? Is the Hamburger Bush analogous to social insects or a colonial organism? And so forth. (Paid for by an NSF grant. Well, lunch was.).That brings us to the current book, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification by Julian Montague. Montague takes the interesting approach of organizing his work with the field observer in mind, rather than the laboratory taxonomist. Carts are considered in relation to their source – i.e., a store offering carts as a convenience to customers, with the major subdivisions of Class A, “false” strays – that is, carts that are still on then source premises or within recollection distance - and Class B, “true” strays, that are beyond source recovery. Each major division has “types” that illustrate a stray shopping cart habitat; for example, Class A2 covers “Plaza Drift” carts, that are remote from their Source but still in the same shopping plaza and therefore at least theoretically recoverable by the Source.Montague describes some carts that have gone sequentially through several types, and is laudably careful to use the term “transition” rather than “evolution” for these changes to avoid implying a phylogenetic rather than chronological relationship. As an example, Montague invites us to consider the sequence B1 (open true, a stray that is no longer recoverable by the Source) to B4 (personal property, a stray that has been collected by an individual for personal use) to B14 (archaic, a stray from a source no longer in business) to B9 (snow immobilization, a stray that can no longer be moved due to snow) to B10 (plow crush, a stray that has been damaged beyond repair by a snow plow – we are cautioned here that a stray simply buried in snow without significant damage should remain in B9) to B19 (refuse).This book is extensively illustrated with photographs showing the cart types, and a large section of field photographs demonstrating the classification process. Appendices include a complex site, the Niagara River Gorge, where vandalized (B12 or B13) carts show a ecological succession with gorge depth similar to classic plant and animal altitude zonation, and suggestions for further work with plastic bags, automobile tires, and traffic cones.A truly excellent scholarly study, certainly the definitive work in the field. My only criticism is that the small format mitigates against use as a “coffee-table” book, where visitors could leaf through it and thereby never trouble you with a visit again. On the other hand, its size does make it convenient to bring to job interviews to be produced when the interviewer asks you to discuss your hobbies.

[melydia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those books shelved in the humor section only because most bookstores don't have a WTF section. It is, in short, exactly what the title suggests: a study of shopping carts that have escaped their shops and parking lots. The subject matter is taken so seriously and each cart categorized so meticulously that it's difficult to accept that this is all truly meant as a joke. I read the entire thing, though, and actually quite enjoyed the photography. There's a certain beauty to the urban decay represented here. My favorite category, of which there was far too little, was "complex vandalism" - and more specifically, the cart somehow launched atop a street sign. I don't know that I would necessarily recommend this book to anyone, but I suppose there is a certain sort of person whose book collection would be incomplete without it. Find them, and give them this book.

[ladycato · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

To make things clear from the start: I'm a dork.The book appealed to such a high level of dorkiness that I couldn't help but love it. The title is exactly what you get - a detailed, full-color book showing the placement and condition of various shopping carts with a detailed taxonomy of class and type. It is 176-pages featuring over 250 pictures of shopping carts in various states of disrepair, imprisonment, and modified use. Most of the images are from around the Buffalo, New York area; being from a warmer climate, I had no idea that snow plows could destroy carts in such a way. Since the book is mostly pictures, there is little to read but the captions are very informative. For example, from page 142:This B/3 FRAGMENT, B/12 SIMPLE VANDALISM, B/14 ARCHAIC specimen was found in a creek that runs through an urban area. At the time of documentation, the SOURCE of origin had been closed for five years.Yes, all shopping carts are specimens, and their stores of origin are the source. The delightful thing about this book is that it is dead serious. You could go anywhere in the country - or indeed the world - and use Julian Montague's system to identify the location and condition of carts.There is an especially interesting section in the back devoted to the unique vandalism in the Niagara Falls River Gorge, complete with a map featuring zones of carts shoved off the cliff and the varying condition and age of the carts within each zone.I highly recommend this field identification guide to all fellow dorks who are amused and intrigued by wandering shopping carts. It's a true classic.

[mendoza_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After reading this well thought out field guide you will have a new appreciation for the occasional stray cart you pass. Is it a Class A False or a Class B True? You will run through the requirements for each in your mind and on your own begin classification of your find. After reading this guide you will even then be able to correctly determine sub classification. While I live in the 'Eastern North America' cited in this guide I am still eagerly awaiting further geographical sites to be expounded upon in future guides.I thank the author for taking up this mostly thankless task.

[orin-814419 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Seriously, this will change your perception of shopping carts. After reading this, you'll have a weird sense of personification for shopping carts. How did they get there? What's going to happen to them? It doesn't happen until you actually experience your first stray shopping cart. You see it there, but you don't pay any attention to it. Then suddenly you find one at a gas station, and wonder, "Is that a True Stray?" Will it be ultimately be a victim of simple vandalism? Or will an agent from the Source rescue it?Seriously, this will change your view of shopping carts.

[dystopos · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As a documentary project, this work is obsessive enough, but misses the mark on living up to its intentions, surviving as barely more than a joke.I bought it in order to inspire myself to create similar obsessive jokes. If it is inspiring, it's because I think I could do better.