Yard Sale Bloodbath

Meghan and I were talking about some of the sales that we’d been to over the years and how sometimes there seems to be a theme for the day. Maybe you see the same book at five different sales. Or maybe there is an abundance of velvet everywhere you go. Or maybe it’s the day that the whole city has decided to get rid of their ice cream makers.

Way back in 2001 we had a day where there was a definite theme: monkeys. We came across tons of monkey items, everything from kitschy ceramic monkeys (some of which I purchased) to a book about … The Monkees. We drove past a sign reading “Free Dirt — and Free Monkey with every load!” And then I found a homemade mixed tape in a box of cassettes called “Spankin’ the Funky Spunk Munky.”

Obviously I had to buy it, based purely on the name alone. I was extra-intrigued by the custom paint job on the cassette itself. I popped into Meghan’s car stereo and it actually turned out to be good, with tracks from the Bar-Kays, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Hugo Montenegro, Barry White, and much more. There were also some funny spoken interludes like movie dialogue and weird cigarette commercials. This tape became our official yard sale theme tape and we played it at least once every single Saturday, until Meghan got a new car without a cassette player and the Funky Spunk Munky era came to a close.

I have to give respect to Meghan’s amazing sale memory, because she remembered that this was the same day that we went to a sale hosted by a wacky girl with a ton of crazy vintage and oddball stuff spread over her front lawn. Parked out front of her house was a scooter with a glittery sign reading “Funky Bunny’s Sparkle Shack.” She was about to move to L.A., which seemed entirely appropriate. I remember spending quite a lot of time looking through her stuff and chatting, and I’m sure I bought something, but I can’t remember what it was. Meghan purchased a stunning disco-themed lunchbox, which came with the original thermos … filled with booze. Nice! (I asked if she ever drank it, but she said no.)

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that we aren’t the only ones who remember this sale. This article from 2002 describes a local historian who spent some time going to yard sales and filming sellers as they parted with their junk:

Over the past three years, Dorpat has trolled Seattle’s weekend yard sales in search of bad art pieces and the people to share the stories behind them. He rolls his video camera to capture the precise moment the seller makes the release. The “Forsaken Art Project” is another of Dorpat’s projects in a life’s worth of projects.

And wouldn’t you know it, one of the sellers he filmed was the Funky Bunny herself!

I can’t find any more info about this project (is there some kind of curse on yard-sale-related movies that prevents me from being actually able to see any of them?), but it sounds completely fascinating. And it would be a bonus to get to revisit a sale we actually went to. In fact, now that I think about it, with all of the sales we were going to around then … I wouldn’t be surprised if Meghan and I recognized more than a few of the sales he filmed. Maybe some day I will get to find out!

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I’ve been busy with a bunch of not-at-all-yard-sale-related activities, including an extended Thanksgiving visit to my parents’ house in Berkeley. I’ve mentioned before that they are longtime yard sale aficionados and started me out right with a healthy love of secondhand treasure hunting in various venues. When I was really little, I don’t remember being toted around to yard sales so much as making regular walks to our neighborhood park, which conveniently also featured a constantly-overflowing freebox. We also made occasional visits to our local Value Village, which were always thrilling for my sister and me. As I got older we started doing the occasional weekend yard-saling tour de Berkeley. Hitting sales was also a regular and much-loved feature of our annual summer visits to grandparents in Florida and New Jersey. (The trove of vintage clothes, ’50s high heels, and rhinestone jewelry I picked up as a young teen in the early ’80s! I feel jealous just thinking about it, even though it was me who bought it. But most of that stuff is long gone or destroyed, and I would be thrilled to come across those kinds of things now, especially at the ludicrously cheap prices I paid then.)

Anyway, as you can imagine, my parents’ house is full of interesting items, and I decided to take a few pictures to document some of their yard sale scores. Of course, there is so much weird and old stuff in their house that I wasn’t always sure whether something was bought at a yard sale, was a hand-me-down from one of my grandparents, or was just something my parents had purchased decades ago and kept around all this time. But they verified for me that all of the following items did indeed come from yard sales.

First, we have what is one of my favorite things in their house, period.

My mom purchased these two ladies at a sale she stumbled upon while out walking the dog. They were $1 each and were supposedly once used in a magic show. They are shown here in their summertime location in front of the fireplace; in fall they move to the hallway, greeting visitors as they walk through the front door.

This lovely (if a bit beat-up) lamp was purchased by my dad for the princely sum of $2.

In case you are wondering what’s going on there, that’s my dad holding up a jacket for shade, since my photos were coming out all glare-y. I also took a close-up of the base, and only just now noticed the nicely coordinating figures in the background. I will take a wild guess that they came from some other yard sale.

Moving out to the back yard, we have these two interesting oblong faces hanging on a fence.

My mom bought these (knowing my dad would love them for yard art) for a buck or two apiece. Amazingly, when I was making the yard sale rounds with her last August, we came upon another one of their kind: same exact shape, with an even more elaborate paint job. It was priced at $5, and would have joined its brethren in the back yard if someone else hadn’t already been in the process of purchasing it.

A recent addition to the back yard is this statue.

Those with kids (or those who read kids’ books) may recognize him as Good Dog Carl. (Now that I’m looking at Carl a little more closely I’m not sure if that’s really who he’s supposed to be, but that’s what we’d all assumed, and as far as I’m concerned he’s close enough.) Every time I walked outside I would automatically and instinctively flinch, thinking there was some big dog in the yard, even though I already knew it was just a statue.

Finally, stowed away in the basement are two of these exotic floor chairs.

My sister picked them up at a sale, then decided she doesn’t really have a place for them at her house. So here they are, waiting for another go-round in the yard sale catch and release program (it was in reference to these very chairs that I first heard her use that term). Which shouldn’t be a problem since my mom has a yard sale every summer (when my dad’s out of town — he loves going to yard sales, but cannot stand having them).

Not pictured: approximately 10,000 other items purchased at yard sales over the years.