Miss H. from the Berry Patch sent in the following pictures and she says,

Caption: — I’ll let you do it, but please note the door is broken on the cinder block box!

I love your site… you’ve made driving a whole new experience…

Miss H.

Ha! They couldn’t have put the mailbox inside one of the holes?

She named this Thirsty Mailbox, I think that’s a perfect description.

Thanks Miss H for sending these in and for your kind words.

Poor Walt must be rolling over in his grave.

I’m heading up to Ichetucknee Springs for a camping trip this weekend. I’ll be bringing my camera along. Rural areas always seem to have real gems, so hopefully I’ll find a giant home-made alligator mailbox and more for next week.

This morning I stopped by DD, grabbed an iced coffee to sip on while I prowled the streets in search of my latest victims. Here they are in the order they were captured:

It’s original (I haven’t seen it before anyway), fairly vandal proof, I’d bet. They painted it the same color as the house, which is an “A” frame home. Hey… I get it.

I’ll just keep this one short. I’m sure the mail carrier isn’t really happy about this. He’ll be forwarding you his chiropractic bill.

What is this? Looks like it belongs on a wall rather than a post. They have to have a key to unlock that box every day when they get their mail. I know I’d lose the key. And don’t tell me I could put the key on my keyring. I lose them all the time too. So I wouldn’t be able to drive my car or get my mail.

What’s the opposite of “keeping up with the Joneses”? Because I stopped to take this picture and then barely got going again before I had to take the next one, three doors down. It’s another Creative Solution!

Needs more duct tape!

This is my mailbox. I figured I should post it before my friends and family decided to out me as a hypocrit.

What’s my mailbox say about me? It says I’m cheap, lazy and spend too much time in front of the computer and not enough time outside working on my landscape. Case in point, instead of getting out there and trying to scrub the mildew off it, I’m in here blogging about it.

So Artbot asked me what I thought was “successful mailbox design”? I wish I had some well thought out response to that. I actually thought about putting some time into answering it and then I realized that like Tim Morris wrote in his article Mailboxes,

“Hideous boxes fight the battle of decoration against function. When you come right down to it, a mailbox is as close to pure function as it gets. You want it to be a box, and you want to get mail in it. It doesn’t strictly require anything more than that. A plain container will do. But there is something in the suburban mind that militates against unadorned function. We have too much of that anyway.”

I’ve had the link to that story up on this blog since day one. I came across it when I was doing a little research for this. It’s really a great read. Long, but insightful and echos my sentiments. A mailbox is a necessary evil and the best thing you can hope for is inconspicuousness.

In my opinion, if I drive by a mailbox and don’t stop to take a picture of it, it’s successful design. That’s my thinking anyway but I’m just a cheap, lazy, gamer. My mailbox says so.

You know what would be fun?

Head over to this guys place in the middle of the night and paint the mailbox green and yellow. Get it’s camo on.

After this submission, I’m starting to wonder if Florida should change it’s name from The Sunshine State to The Ugly Mailbox State. I guess it’s a good thing I live here because I’ll never run out of material.

Hi!
I just found your very cool blog and I’ve got some photos for you! These were taken on our ‘05 Florida holiday, some are really awful. Pictures are both from the east and west coast. Due to its filesize (18MB) I put an archive containing the photos on rapidshare. [Edited] Also I just noticed, that I forgot to add one picture to the archive. You find it attached to the email. This was a WHOLE suburb (may have been a holiday village too) with all identical ugly mailboxes!Greetings from Germany,
Cynric

Actually, I was getting a little concerned about not having enough pictures. Then I drove to a friends house and was cursing to myself the whole fifteen minutes there because I forgot my camera. I missed at least five mailboxes.

Regardless, I need not fear. Cynric has sent me at least two weeks worth! You’ll be seeing them soon. Be afraid.

Joseph R. e-mailed me this lovely angel he photographed. If you click on the pic you can find out more information about it

To me, it looks like she’s picking her nose. You might think that’s funny but it’s …. (wait for it)

snot!

Wooooo I couldn’t resist, sorry.

Is it in bad blog form to have emoticons in the title? Do I care? Andy Wibbles is probably uploading a video right now. “Mistake #308 that noob bloggers makes is using emoticons” It’s ok, I’ve already made Mistake #1, so why stop now?

As usual, I digress.

This falls under “unusual” not ugly in my book. Just clarifying before I get flamed anymore. ( “but the Manatee is CUTE” )

Joel Hass writes,

“I don’t know if I view my mailboxes as ugly — I certainly don’t like making boring mailboxes. I live in a dragon shaped house, with gold dragonfly shutters, dragon shaped hand rails and so I made a dragon shaped mailbox of scrap metal. Note, he speaks with forked tongue.”

Noted!

Visit the Joel Haas Studio to view more of his mailboxes and art. Very creative and fun.And if you’re ever in his neighborhood of Raleigh, North Carolina visit his Sculpture Walk. How cool is that?

From Gareth S.

“Here’s a picture of my dad’s mailbox setup, it was made up to look like an anatomically correct mermaid until the post office complained and he had to remove certain parts.
enjoy!”

The note says, “Recent decoration additions are offensive, please remove.”

Makes me wonder if neighbors complained or he had a prudish mail carrier?

If Janet Jackson can’t get away with it, neither can Pops!

I’ve received a few e-mails with some great mailboxes and I’ll get them posted soon, promise.

For now, I wanted to share a link to David Morrison’s

To be fair, I live in a state where you can go to the gun show Saturday morning and walk out with a concealed weapons permit later that afternoon. So composition isn’t my main concern, out running is