The Mail Van

We saved the best for last - to end this flashback series of Californian mailboxes we choose our all time favourite mailbox: the little mail van we found on Alameda Padre Serra in Santa Barbara .. we hope it's still there and wasn't consumed in the Tea Fire. For comparison we show it here next to the actual mail van that used to come and park in front of our flat on West Campus. The mailbox craftsman did a pretty good job, eh!

The mail is dead ... long live the mail

Well, it's not like we want to be morbid, but we honestly always found that what this mailbox resembles most of all is a coffin.

Some might claim that these days one only receives bad news (window envelopes) in the mailbox.

Not least since even such important events as births and weddings have begun to be communicated via e-mail, facebook, blogs or even sms...

Surface mail

Actually we don't know what happened to the rest of the ship, but at least the anchor is here.

This is another example of a rather sturdy stand for the mailbox - but since neither the mailbox itself nor the 'anchoring' to the anchor appear unusually robust one might ask what good it does.

Mail and Cacti

We have previously broached the subject of how much space a mailbox can take up. And related, how large numbers can be used for writing the street number of the house. To be fair, we have to add that these guys seem to be number in both categories.

The cactus garden one can see a bit of behind the mailbox is, BTW, decidedly one of the more tasteful in that neighbourhood.

Multiplet mailboxes

As previously mentioned it isn't uncommon to see clusters of mailboxes along the highways in the US. Interestingly, the phenomenon is also encountered in cities. For example (in the left side of the collage), both the "twin" mailboxes and the fairly Little-Claus-and-Big-Claus like mailboxes are from Santa Barbara. In the right side of the collage you see larger clusters of mailboxes: the most mixed set is typical of the Isla Vista neighbourhood right next to UCSB while the string of identical mailboxes was found, curiously, in Hilo, Hawai'i.

Post barns

Another recurring theme amongst the US mailboxes is the mailboxes which mostly resemble barns, garages, dog houses, and other miniature outhouses. Executed with varying attention to detail, of course.

The Fish Box II

Yes, it isn't only in Hawai'i one can find a fishy mailbox - such can also be found in Goleta.

It may not be as impressive as the Hawai'ian one, but at least we found it on the corner of Sea Gull St which somehow seems very appropriate.

Approved mailbox

Unlike many other US mailboxes the decoration of this one doesn't appear the least bit home made (and it certainly wasn't unique - we found a couple of it in the neighbourhood we lived in).

One of the most fascinating aspects of this mailbox is the message, part of the cast, that the mailbox is approved by The United States Postmaster General - that is, the head of the US mail service. Which, by the way is an authority which can pride itself of being older than the US constitution as the office was founded already in 1775.

Patriotic Mail

People sometimes have funny tendency to want to show off their flag - we know it from Denmark (which unfortunately we don't have a good picture of), from Switzerland (the other little huts also had flags on full right next them), from France (notice particularly the trees along Champs-Élysées in the upper left corner of the collage).

As such it shouldn't really come as a great surprise that the phenomenon is also found in the US. But we were still a little amazed to find this mailbox exactly in Ojai, California - hippie-town Ojai is mostly known for all their purveyors of alternative treatments, and for not allowing chain stores within the city limits.

The Mail Train

This little mail train from Goleta has certainly been waiting its turn to get on the blog. Not least considering it is one of the mailboxes that gave us the idea for the mailbox theme in the first place.

But here it is.

On the flipside

So far the mailbox series has been mostly about all the people who have put some extra effort into their mailboxes... but of course there is another type of mailbox owners: does who sit back and do nothing when in fact action is long overdue. Curiously we found these 3 examples on one and the same street in Goleta.

Ingenious Lazyness

After debating it here at the editorial office we have agreed to put some more American mailboxes on the blog even though we do not live in America any longer. It's not like we are discovering a lot of funny mailboxes here in Geneva anyway.

This time it is going to concern a mailbox which might at first appear quite ordinary. But upon closer inspection, one will notice that this particular mailbox is mounted on a line allowing the owner to empty the mailbox without having to walk the long, tiring trip down the driveway. We find this a particularly interesting attitude for a person who has chosen to live on one of the streets furthest up the side of the mountains inside the city of Santa Barbara.