The Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse

Who Let the Dogs Out?

The urban iditarod. It is quickly shaping up to be a national wink wink nudge nudge excuse to maim and defile shopping carts. This past Saturday the carnage was taking place in Los Angeles. On this day our four-wheeled friends lived in the City of Angst.

The tradition of having the huskie-less Iditarod started, of course, in San Francisco. And – like veganism, sandals and pedestrian right-of-way – the bad idea fanned out from the bay to points across the globe.

The Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse is currently formulating a plan to counter the popularity of the urban iditarod. We cannot publish details at this time except to say that it may involve salmonella-laced beer.

Oh Canada!

The fight against shopping cart abuse is spreading through the bowels of the internet like a blessed flu. We recently discovered a blog dedicated to fighting shopping cart abuse in Toronto. When even the socialists are getting off their couches you know a cause has momentum! We have documented our own abuses in Toronto. We thank our comrades for taking up the cause – confronting abusers in the lots, the ravines, the rinks and any other type of location they have in Canada. To our brothers up north we says Long Live the Righteous/Je Me Souviens!

We Got You Covered, Baby

Have an infant? Go grocery shopping? The fine folks at My Baby Shopping Cart Covers have what you need. Though we tend to think of shopping carts as the cradle of civilization, they are not necessarily the best cradle for you baby. These puffy inserts score a ten for utility and an eleven for bling. As you glide leisurely down the aisles you may spy other parents dosing their babies with Nyquil to stop the crying. You could not be more at peace. You’re on a zen walkabout with a grocery checklist and ten pounds of fabric stuffed into wire mesh. When you have reached the end of your journey the insert slides neatly from the cart, baby and all, ready to be tossed into your car.

Stop the Windy City Madness

Today in Chicago the annual Chiditarod is taking place. This event invites teams of five people – four “dogs” tied to a tricked-out shopping cart and one “musher” running behind steering – to race through the city streets. The cover story is that this is a fun event that benefits charity. In truth it is nothing more than a Gen-X orchestrated shopping cart abuse fest.

Next year The Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse will be organizing a rival event – Flannelitarod. Teams of former Chiditarod participants will be forced to read each others poetry and drink instant coffee. Then they’ll be sprayed down with hoses.

no one heard at all, not even the chair

The environmental consciousness bandwagon has a lot of steam, and now apparently furniture designers are clamoring to get on board. Supposedly eco-friendly, but truthfully eco-tarded, recycled shopping cart chairs are now fetching a pretty pence. The anglo-trash outfit Reestore is stocked with these items created by “designer” Max McMurdo. A more appropriate title for Max…how about mutilator? Or simply shopping cart abuser? The shopping cart serves as a vehicle for consumerism not as an object of one. Such irony sits with no comfort.

Shopping Carts by Evening Light

The soft afternoon sun hits a pair of carts. Some see beauty in fruit-bearing trees. Some see beauty in child-bearing welfare mothers. But we should all see beauty in grocery-bearing shopping carts.

Shredding Me Softly

We have seen so many different horrific types of shopping cart abuse here at The Center we thought we might be becoming desensitized to it all. Then we saw the Shopping Cart vs. Shredder video. It is two minutes of sheer brutality. The video was made by SSI Shredding Systems, a company based, for all intents, in hell. Shopping carts are chewed up as easily as a Snickers bar in the hands of a fat kid.

The video is not for the feint of heart. It is our duty to present it here.

It’s Hammer Time!

Welcome to the newly redesigned Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse website! ShoppingCartAbuse.com has been online since 1996 fighting the battle others were too afraid to take on. Thirteen years ago we built this website from simple ones and zeroes. Back then it took visitors nearly two hours to download a grainy black and white photo of a shopping cart being beaten by people wearing parachute pants. But above the crackle of the 14.4 modems the online public called out for more. The internet offered them their first glimpse of the horrors of shopping cart abuse. The internet has provided all sorts of first glimpses since then, but none with the same combination of sadness, fear and confusion.

In the years since this site first launched hundreds of thousands of visitors have viewed the documented abuses and shared their own stories. Join us as we embark on the next chapter. We have rebuilt the site to be a kind of web log or “wlog”. We will use it to tell tales of desperation and hope. We will use it to show pictures with poignancy, drama and color. We look forward to sharing the ride with you as we fight the societal scourge that is shopping cart abuse.