Yard Sale Bloodbath

Sometimes, we go to a yard sale and get the strange sensation that we have been there before. It’s not some metaphysical time travel or past life regression thing. Just the simple fact that when you have been going to yard sales in the same area for more than a few years or so, you are bound to find yourself retracing your steps. Combine that with the fact that people who have a yard sale once will usually have another one down the line, and you have the makings of a phenomenon: sale ja vu.

Last weekend we had a whole rash of these experiences while making the Memorial Day weekend rounds. Sometimes it was a sale that was good before, but sucked this time around. Like when we hit a block sale which Meghan instantly recognized as the site of her major Aveda score two years back. Unfortunately there was no Aveda or anything else good to be found this time around.

Another stop was a fundraising sale for a meditation center. Once we were there I instantly recognized it from a previous visit. I remembered that there had been something annoying at the sale last time, like high prices or crazy sellers, but couldn’t quite place my finger on what had been so irritating. In any case, it was bad before and bad again, which is sadly often the case. (If we recognize a known bad sale from the car, we usually just keep driving.)

The best is when you pull up to a sale and are so stoked because you remember how good it was last time. This was the case when we found ourself at the sock guy’s sale. We rifled through his huge tubs of brand-new socks ($2 a pair!) and both got a few items from his racks of vintage men’s clothing. Meghan even scored a great old leather jacket for $30 (much to the dismay of the long-time vintage dealer who showed up right as we were leaving).

We also made yet another stop at the latest installment of what we’ve been referring to as “the avant garde lady sale.” (I don’t think it actually counts as sale ja vu when you’re deliberately hitting the same sale week after week.) This time she’d unearthed her jewelry stash. I managed to resist buying anything, but Meghan grabbed a few small items.

We did hit some sales that were brand new to us. One was advertised as “Grandma’s Estate Sale.” Let me tell you, Grandma had some bad stuff.

Then there was the sale where I was compelled to buy a giant light-up Santa for $1. I did not, however, take them up on this item, even though it had the exact right price.

At one sale we found some of the wackiest homemade pillows we’d ever seen. Meghan asked if she could take a picture and (more or less predictably) the sellers tried to convince her to just buy them. Um … no.

Walking back to the car, she said “Smell my hand!” This is not a command that one should generally comply with, but it is a testimony to how much I trust her that I did. It had an oddly strong sort of lavender-sagey odor. We figured the pillows had been stuffed with something smelly. It wasn’t bad, just weird how intensely the scent clung to her hand after only a few seconds of contact.

There was a sale which had basically nothing except for these Cabbage Patch dolls, just kicking back in the front yard.

And last but not least, there was a sale filled with piles of baby stuff, with a few mundane household items thrown in. We left pretty quickly and as I reviewed my list to plot out our next stop, Meghan mentioned seeing a sign nearby promising an “Awesome Sale!” We found it, and realized it was the sale that we had just been at. An irresistible compulsion to jump out of the car and make the sign a little more accurate got the better of me.

We laughed for a while, wondering what the people would think when they came back to take down their signs (assuming they weren’t the kind of people to just leave them up for weeks or months after the fact). Personally, if I found someone had done that to my sign I would probably think it was pretty funny. And really, “just OK” is not half as mean as I could have been.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad day … especially for an always-questionable holiday weekend!

For the first time in ages we got an early start – like 8:00. I know for other areas that isn’t all that early, but in Seattle most sales start at 9:00 or 10:00. With that said, one of the last sales we hit on Saturday started at 11:00, and at 11:20 they still didn’t have anything unpacked. Even if you drink heavy or work in a bar, how could you not be ready?!

We hit some really boring sales right off the bat. Kid crap, Pottery Barn and the Gap. I know many folks like that stuff, but I really can’t stand most of it. We did hit one sale that had this amazing disco record player. Ten years ago I would have loved to own it, but I am getting stronger with age.

We hit an amazing new bakery in Seattle. Yummy and worth a drive across town.

Next was estate sale near the zoo and I just hate the company that puts on these sales, since it’s so obvious that they put leftover stuff from other sales into the next estate. It’s tacky and they usually don’t have anything good to begin with. Jenny picked up a copy of the sci-fi game Amoeba Wars for some unknown reason. I did spy these sad prom dresses in the basement, but the room was scary.

I was excited that avant-garde lady was having her clothing and textile sale at 10:00. On the way there we saw another sale half a block from her house. As I was getting ready to pull over I obeyed the Seattle pedestrian right of way law (yeah, we really have one of those) and the guy that I stopped for started yelling at us and was obviously drunk (he even had four tall cans in a bag). At the sale even the sellers seemed a little shocked by the guy. Their sale sucked, but Jenny felt the need to see if she could get me buy some Ricky Martin DVDs. I think I told her to get bent (in so many words). Then as we started to get back in the car, I saw this woman jogging and she didn’t exactly seem retarded, but she did seem like she was a little “funny” and she was jogging really strange. I pointed her out to Jenny and as she passed us her ass was full on sticking out of her skirt. Like her panties had ridden WAY UP. It was a major DON’T in a Vice Magazine kind of way.

Since it was pretty grim and there was nothing else around, we went and sat on the porch til the clothing/fabric sale opened up. She had great stuff and it was nice to have first crack at everything.

Sad, that the woman was super tiny, so many items just would never have fit. I did get four bakelite animal napkin rings for $18 and a really nice 50’s gabardine jacket for $20. Some items I told her should really go onto eBay, but she seemed content.

After that we went to what was supposed to be an estate sale, but was really by some picker that sort of bugs me when I see him at sales.

There was a really odd assortment of old and new items and some of them had antique mall price tags on it, which is never good. Some of it was just strange.

A friend of the seller’s who used to be a ref for the Rat City Rollergirls was there, so it was nice to see him. I asked if I could take a photo of this scary CPR guy.

We don’t know what he really is, but let the nightmare begin. Jenny said that she really couldn’t imagine giving that thing mouth to mouth.

We then hit a sale that didn’t have much, but the person having it was a hilarious tanorexic tranny. Very sweet, but it was almost hard to keep a straight face. It was at this point that we knew we needed to head for home. We really hadn’t bought much and it was starting to feel like the whole day was just too strange.

On the way home we hit the most boring sale whose ads had proclaimed to be “”two twenty-something girls needing a new start on life after bad ex-boyfriends and drama”" and “not only are we dead sexy and have a cute dog, but everything is priced to move!” It was two guys and a girl that really had nothing, but I thought this sign was funny. I asked if I could take a photo and they tried to give it to me. When I told them I only wanted a small version of it, one that could be deleted, they let me just take the picture.

We stopped at one more boring sidewalk sale and then decided to check out one more from our list that was close to home. The ad said “NEW THINGS FROM THE CASTLE!!!” (yes, in all caps with three exclamation points) and we discussed what the hell that might actually mean. We never actually found out, since when we drove up it looked too pathetic to even bother to get out of the car.

We each bought a few items, but not even enough for a trunk photo.

I feel like Jenny covered most of what happened last Saturday, but she did leave out a few key West Seattle highlights:

1. All of us talking like robots after Karl made some off-handed comment about the TV show Small Wonder. Something that was just a blip in my world, but it’s not very often that you can get 3 people in a car to all talk like robots for no reason. Everything from driving directions to various insults and obscenities … all said in monotone robotic voices for about 30 minutes.
2. Me telling the guy with the “no smoking” sign that I planned on blocking his driveway and smoking.
3. This Quiet Riot and UFO double DVD was from my friend’s sale, and we had been making fun of it and many other items at his sale until I figured out that I knew him. I guess my snarky comments are bound to come back and bite me in the ass sooner or later, right?

   

4. Me requesting that the pirate guy only speak to me in Somalian.

She didn’t lie about the yummy food we had, or all the oddball items that we saw including really ugly furniture, an amazing telephone cord holder and … I think these pictures speak for themselves.

Last Saturday was the annual West Seattle Garage Sale Day. I was out of town for it last year, but it was pretty fun the year before that, so I was stoked. It had threatened to rain earlier in the day but it turned out to be perfect yard sale weather! We made plans to meet Karl at a bakery right in the middle of things. We do try to stay on topic and keep the food bloggage to a minimum here, but please allow us to share this one photo of the numminess with you.

Fortified with croissants and coffee, we headed off. We had a map with well over 150 sales on it, and almost didn’t know where to start. Our first stop ended up being an interesting sale where all their stuff seemed to have odd prices, like $26 or $17. They explained “It’s marketing!” Not sure how well that was working for them since I didn’t end up buying anything, but along with their price tag “commentary,” at least I was entertained.

Next we went to a sale where the people owned an ungodly number of books about cats. You can never really tell if the people bought all this stuff themselves, or if they had a cat and so their relatives decided to get them goofy cat books for every single birthday and Christmas ever. What’s shown here is only a sampling — there were far more of these, including gems such as “How To Massage Your Cat.”

A few stops later, we hit a sale where we all thought it was funny that they had prominently posted “No Smoking” signs around the garage.

The guy told us there was more stuff around the back, and it turned out to be really good. They had rows of tables filled with all sorts of ancient items. A lot of it would have been super great except for being overly crusty or damaged, which was a little sad. But Meghan and Karl both got some good scores here.

We went to one sale where there was a tidy collection of boring household items … and a staggering quantity of dirty magazines.

Next we hit a block with about six sales on it. At one sale we were all cracking jokes about the CDs this one guy was selling. Then Meghan realized that she knew him. She also knew the sellers at the sale a couple of houses down. In fact, I think she ran into at least seven or eight people she knew over the course of the day.

It was on this same block that Meghan heard one seller say “I’m bringing out a whole bunch of chicklets!” She wondered what the deal was, then the seller dumped out a box of books … it turned out to be Chick Lit.

We’d been out for about two hours and still had only covered a small section of the map, so we headed to a new area. We got sucked into checking out the group sale being held in a parking lot, even though both Karl and Meghan said last year it wasn’t very good.

Sure enough, it was pretty much a bust, with too many people selling crafts or new items. The one good thing was that somehow Meghan managed to find a vintage Mexican circle skirt for fifty cents!

After that, we went to a sale that had stuff all laid out neatly on shelves in the garage. It had a little too much of that “perma-sale” feeling.

Up until now I hadn’t even been looking at the descriptions on the official map, but then I noticed that one sale nearby said “Our treasures be your treasures now. Arrrrr matey!” I thought they were just being wacky in their description, but when we got there we found that they weren’t screwing around.

I wished that I wanted to buy something from the pirate sale, but I left empty-handed. We ventured on, eventually stopping at another sale where the people were definitely having fun with their yard sale setup.

The same people also had this Groundskeeper Willie on display. I don’t know if he was for sale or just there to lay down the law!

Throughout the day we did see all sorts of signs. They ranged from the super-professional …

… to the super half-assed.

Around 12:30 we were all hungry and seemed to be losing some steam, so we headed to Zippy’s Burgers, where I have been wanting to go ever since Meghan went there after last year’s sale day. Oh my god, it was good. And as we were chowing down, who showed up but our pal and recurring guest star Leslie, who had been making the sale rounds with another friend. We all thought it was funny that she and Meghan had eaten there after the sales last year, and now without any prior coordination they’d both ended up here again.

We headed back to where we’d met up so we could drop Karl at his car, and saw signs for a rummage sale we’d missed earlier. How could we not check it out? Sadly, it was one of the sparsest, grimmest rummage sales ever.

Maybe it had been good earlier — who knows? At this point it was pretty much down to junky books and fancy clothes.

In the parking lot nearby was another group sale. I was baffled by this sign posted out on the fence.

There wasn’t much there — maybe it had been cleaned out earlier, or maybe it was just never good. It’s hard to tell when you are hitting sales at almost two in the afternoon. They did have helpful signs designating various sections, like “Grandma Chic” and “Retro Groovy.” Sadly, I didn’t see anything that was either retro OR groovy. We started to head out, and then I spotted this by the cash box.

The woman running the sale saw me looking at it and jumped up excitedly, wanting to show us her “Frogsquatch” t-shirt. I asked where Frogsquatch had come from, but I must have been dazed by the insanity of it all, because I honestly have no idea what she told me. In any case, I wasn’t even gonna think about touching the Squatcharium — that’s for damn sure.

We parked near Karl and sorted out the stuff in the trunk, which was filled up pretty good …

I thought I had bought a fair amount of stuff, but it turned out all I got was a handful of books, a couple of tiki mugs (which I don’t actively collect anymore, but I can’t seem to pass them up if the price is right), a ceramic plant pot, and a pair of kids’ sandals. Not the most score-riffic day! But I had a whole bunch of fun. And of course, part of the fun was seeing all the weird-ass stuff people had on offer … some of which we did indeed get pictures of. We’ll save those for Part 2 of our West Seattle recap, so do stay tuned!

My mom and aunt had threatened to come down from Bellingham for sales last weekend. I say threatened, since they usually flake. When they do come, my mom is unable to read any street signs or navigate to any addresses, so I end up being really crabby.

I was sort of excited that Jenny would being coming along, but at the last minute she bailed (just like last time … hmm … I am seeing a trend). She said was sick, but she did email over an organized list of sales, so it’s hard to fault her. I looked over the list and gave my mom a primer on how to read it, then pretty much got a plan in my head for the first few sales.

I had driven by the Bright Street rummage sale a few days before. I was pretty excited about this one, since I had hit a great sale there about four years ago. Not exactly what I expected, no clothing (they said they didn’t want to deal with it) but tons of books and kids crap. The flipside was it was all cheap, like a dime cheap.

My mom filled half the car in the matter of about 20 minutes. This reminded me of the time that she purchased so much stuff at yard sales that no one else could buy anything because there was no room left in the car. When I mentioned this, she just told me to shut up.

After that we hit what Jenny and I probably would have been calling the “two hot lesbians sale,” but since I was with my family …

They had tons of great furniture, mannequins, and all sorts of sex, gender, and identity-based literature!

We hit a few more sales. Folks started putting out tarps and at points it did start to rain. This moving sale that bunny was lounging at really didn’t have anything.

I am just not all that sure why you would have a moving sale if you only planned on selling a few items. Why not just drive it all to the Goodwill? When I have a moving sale I get rid of loads of stuff, since I am unwilling to force friends and family into helping me move crap that I should just get rid of. Okay, that isn’t completely true, but I do try to get rid of stuff.

Last stop was an estate sale in no-sidewalk-land. The only thing that I sort of wanted was this Race Trap game.

The sale didn’t have anything amazing, but the house was very ’60s and I like walking around in people’s homes (as long as the death vibe is at a minimum, a.k.a. not like last week).

Sadly, without Jenny there I forgot all about taking a trunk photo!