Scavenger of the Rich and Famous

There’s something about a Web site with an animated cockroach that just draws you in.

At https://www.garbology.com, the energetic little bug leads you to artifacts from counterculture gadfly A.J. Weberman’s 28 years of surreptitious pawing through the refuse of the famous.

One celeb’s garbage is a humbler man’s gold mine. Weberman says his forays have revealed that Sara, the love of Bob Dylan’s life, shopped at Bloomingdale’s; former Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell preferred Dewar’s Scotch to his wife’s Tanqueray gin; and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a devotee of Estee Lauder Sport Fragrance Spray and Chanel No. 5.

Weberman’s Web site, he says, “is like an extension of the underground press,” where he wrote about garbage-mining in the ‘70s for such alternative New York City papers as the East Village Other.

The world has changed since then. Celebs are more garbage-aware, and shredders eat up the really fun stuff. Still, there are nuggets. A recently concluded mission through Gloria Steinem’s garbage reveals that she likes opera, dance and U.S. News & World Report, Weberman says.

As for current projects, he’s keeping the lid on tight.

“I can’t say,” says Weberman, a spy in the house of crud, “because I don’t want to alert them to my activities.”