Yard Sale Bloodbath

This is a week overdue, but getting ready for the holiday season and coming down with some wacky flu bug has kept me from blogging (and I’m lazy).

My boyfriend and I went on a whirlwind southern California and Arizona trip. I didn’t plan on doing any major junking, since it can be difficult to find yard sales in towns that you don’t know very well and we planned on doing most of our travels during the week.

Our first two days we bummed around San Diego with friends, mostly eating, drinking, and sleeping. I did go to one really great store — Wear It Again Sam. Everything in the store is high quality and she has a nice clean layout.

We drove all over Anaheim, CA and saw tons of signs, but since it was around 4:00 on a Sunday it didn’t even seem worth it to go. I’m guessing that it could be a good town to hit, since it was pretty easy to get around and signs seemed plentiful.

I hit a few vintage/junking stores in LA: the full on cowboy and Levi’s store called Chuck’s Vintage on Melrose, Shabon Mint Condition, and Wasteland. I really do like the Wasteland in San Francisco better. I spotted these 2 signs and the “bygone era” sale sounds right up my alley.

After two days in LA we drove to Palm Springs. It was sunny and beautiful, but I didn’t expect to find any super deals there. I did find one thrift store called Angel Thrift. The sign said to go around back, so I walked into the back and the place was a total dump. I mean we are in one of the most expensive places to live in the US and I couldn’t find one thing of interest there. I did think that the clothes hanging station was pretty cool.

After walking around the store for a few moments, I found the Angel Thrift Boutique. Now, this is the place that “good shit” went.

I didn’t really find anything that I needed, but they did have good stuff. They had one case filled with higher end purses and vintage finds. I did spy these photos that made me smile, but I already have enough stuff like that at home.

In the morning I tried to go to Room Service -– I had seen their ads in Atomic Ranch Magazine and the place looked great, but they are only open Wednesday through Sunday. My boyfriend made some crack saying he wondered where he could get a hanging bubble chair on a Tuesday.

I was able to hit a wonderful store called Route 66 West with tons of vintage Bakelite, ’50s Lucite purses and other really nice vintage costume jewelry.

After Palm Springs we drove to Arizona for a couple of days. On our last day there I went to one garage sale, the only one that I went to in the almost ten days that I was gone. If this blog is all about the odd shit that people try to sell at sales then I hit pay dirt. First someone came to the sale in a golf cart — although that really isn’t all that strange, since it was in a “retirement community” built around a golf course. The sale itself was pretty craptastic, but then I got the gross-out factor times 100: sitting on one of the tables were two boxes of Summer’s Eve douche. Ack!!!

About 30 minutes later we hit a Goodwill that was super modern outside –- if a Goodwill can be considered fancy, this one was pretty fancy. Then I noticed that they sell food. Really. When I made a comment, a woman told me that if something gets a dent while on the truck they can’t sell it, so they sell it at the Goodwill. Hmm … We don’t seem to have any dented food in Seattle, since I have never seen this before.

Over the past three weekends I have been to a total of one sale. Which is fine — I have had other things going on and I haven’t really been in the mood to hit sales anyway. Truth be told, I am enjoying it being the off season! In any case, the one I ended up at wasn’t just any old sale … it was a ROCK & ROLL sale.

The ad said it was a moving sale from someone who’d worked at a local radio station for decades and was selling records, books, and more, saying that if it had anything to do with rock music it was probably there. I also remember it saying something about not disturbing the occupant and how he was a bit of a packrat, so I assumed the sale was run by outside professionals, but it turned out to be the guy selling his own stuff.

There were records galore, but at $5 each I wasn’t going to go crazy. There were plenty of magazines too, both pornographic and otherwise.

In another room were a few t-shirts (cool, but kinda pricey), musical equipment and tons of books. Mostly of the rock variety but with some other stuff mixed in.

The seller was nice and seemed to be completely at peace with shedding what seemed to be years and years worth of collected items. I am sure he kept a few choice items for himself, but all in all I got the vibe that at one time he’d cherished these things, but now they were just excess baggage that didn’t have the meaning they once had for him.

My husband picked up a few records and I bought some wacky pins. Of course I called the Record Squirrel and told him to check it out. He came the next day when prices were slashed and grabbed a bunch of stuff. For November, where there’s not much out there, at least it was more interesting than your typical moving sale.

And that may just be the last sale I hit before the new year … but we still have some blog fodder comin’ at ya! Meghan’s been traveling and has some field notes, and we both have a couple of book reports on the horizon … posts may be continue to be on the infrequent side around here, but I think blog posts are kinda like stuff found at yard sales: quality is way more important than quantity.