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.

I was visiting my parents in Berkeley the weekend before last. As I’ve mentioned before, I got my love of yard sales from my folks, who have been loving the wacky second-hand stuff since before I was born. We hadn’t originally planned to hit any sales while I was there, but when Saturday morning turned out to be free, we decided to stop at a few. Every time I look at the East Bay garage sale listings on Craigslist I appreciate how good we have it in Seattle, and I would say that is both in quantity and quality — granted, there are occasionally some super blowout great sales in Berkeley, but they seem to be way too few and far between. Still, we rustled up a short list and headed off.

My mom was navigating and she said that she recognized the address of an estate sale from having seen the house recently on a real estate tour. She said it was almost certainly going to be bad and we should just skip it. While I figured she was probably right, I was a little sad since the ad had made it sound pretty good. Meanwhile, we stopped at boring sale after boring sale and hardly bought anything. As we were navigating back from the last stop we drove right past a sign for the sale she’d recognized, and since we were practically there already we decided what the hell.

The house looked cute from the outside, but inside it was just yucky. Everything was dingy and there was a super strange vibe. It felt like something bad had happened there … or at least nothing good had ever happened there. The rooms appeared to have been decorated in the ’70s (in a pseudo-hippie bad taste kind of style), and their stuff was all terrible. The last straw was the basement, which could have been a testimonial for why you should really get rid of things, rather than stack them up in the crawl space (mattresses) or keep them in open cardboard boxes (newspapers) or just dump them on the floor (Easter baskets) and then not touch them again for about 25 years.

I did take some pictures, but I hope you will not be too upset to hear that I ended up deleting them off my camera. I just had such a weirded-out vibe from the place, I really didn’t want to see anything from that sale again.

So, my mom was right, thanks to her inside real-estate scoop. She mentioned how getting to know the city streets so well from her job was useful when trying to navigate to yard sales, or find an obscure address for some other reason. I’ve certainly been able to use my yard-sale-gained knowledge of Seattle’s streets to get around quicker. Granted, a lot of our streets are numbered, which makes it easier, but there are still enough oddball nooks and crannies that it helps to have driven through a whole lot of different neighborhoods already.

And then I started thinking about other aspects of being a real estate agent that have something in common with being a yard sale regular. Like the stuff factor. It’s obvious that you go to yard sales to find stuff. But did you know that real estate agents occasionally end up with random unwanted stuff left behind when a house is sold? My mom has ended up with furniture, rugs, planters — all from houses that she helped people buy. And while I was in town, she actually had to run out to pick up her latest score, which she had described as “stained glass art with a naked lady on it.” I guess the previous owner had been a stained glass artist and left a few pieces behind, and the new owners decided they could live without that one. I was kind of scared of what it was going to look like, imagining some kind of tawdry raunch, but it turned out to be rather pretty.

I think that real estate agents are also very tuned into the concept of value being fluid. That is, an item’s value is really whatever someone is actually willing to pay at a given time and place, and not some well-defined number that can’t be argued with (no matter what some “collectible price guides” would like to think). Haggling (or “making a counter-offer”) is a completely normal thing to do in both activities — though I’m glad to say that having someone offer more than the asking price is practically unheard of at yard sales. This price fluidity can be really great or really frustrating when you are dealing with secondhand items. Just like people might have a hard time accepting that their house isn’t going to sell for what they think it should, there are yard sale sellers who think that if something sold on eBay for a certain amount, their similar item should get the same price at their yard sale. On the other hand, when you find something that’s priced fairly to you, it’s a beautiful thing (even if the person next to you wouldn’t have paid half that much for it).

And of course there’s the fact that both of these activities involve going into a whole lot of strangers’ houses. That’s interesting in and of itself. Sales have taken us into some of the coolest houses around … and the creepiest ones too. And I think along with getting a glimpse of the insides of houses, there’s also the opportunity to see a lot of interesting outsides of houses too. Although maybe this last part is a stretch, because you can also see a lot of interesting houses just by driving or walking around. Like this one, which we were excited to stumble across randomly.

Now, granted, this is Berkeley, where you are about as likely to see a Republican as you are a leprechaun. But even so, it was cool to see so much enthusiasm for a presidential candidate. It’s pretty well-painted, too (even if I do keep trying to figure out if the hand is coming right out of his ear!)

That’s a No on Prop 8 sign there, too. I swear, it has been over 10 years since I moved out of California, but I keep sort of wishing I was still registered there just so I could vote against that shit.

There are certainly a lot of things that real estate and yard sales don’t have in common. For one thing, the general prices you’re dealing with are off by a factor of, oh … 10,000? And being in the real estate business certainly doesn’t necessarily mean one is inclined to like yard sales. But I do think it can give you an interesting take on things … and maybe even keep you away from some of the worst sales, if you stick to your intuition!

So … I caught you all up on my recent vacation to London. While I was there, I was able to sneak off with my husband for three days in Paris! It was such a short time that we didn’t do a ton of junking, despite my having procured some tips from the creator of the fabulous Visiting Flea Markets and Thrifts in France blog, which conveniently started up just about the time I was starting to plan our trip, and which proves that Americans do not have a monopoly on selling really odd secondhand items. So alas, I didn’t get to visit any crazy thrift stores or brocantes (town-wide group sales). If only I’d had more time!

Instead, we raced around town, strolling through as many neighborhoods and taking in as many sights as we could without driving ourselves crazy. I had to go to the Centre Pompidou to check out some of the modern art … tons of amazing paintings, drawings, and other creations. One of the rooms contained this … assemblage? diorama? installation? I don’t know what to call it. It was an arrangement of famous and not-so-famous paintings from their collection, mixed in with indigenous sculptures from different places and other odd objects (only some of which were described). I’m not actually sure what the point was, but it was cool … and it sort of reminded me of some of the artier estate sales I’ve been to, with interesting items all crammed together on shelves.

Of course we had to hit some record stores. This was my favorite.

And we did do one thing that’s relevant to this blog: we went the flea market — or “marché aux puces” in French. Puce means flea, so it’s the same term. This food stand there was actually named Puce. I can’t believe that their sign managed to make fleas look so cute.

This is the biggest flea market in Paris, at Porte de Clignancourt. And it was huge indeed! When we got off the subway we made our way through endless rows of outdoor stalls … filled mostly with new crap.

It was French crap, so at least it had that going for it. But really, it was mostly the same kind of new cheap stuff you’d find in flea markets throughout the world. After walking through what felt like miles of this we knew there had to be some secondhand stuff somewhere, and things took a turn for the better when we ducked into an enclosed area containing an antique mall.

I just dug up some online information about this flea market, and I’m reading through the descriptions of the different markets and realizing I have no idea where the hell we were. Sorry — I wasn’t taking good notes! But I did take plenty of pictures.

There were rows and rows of stalls, upstairs and downstairs, with all sorts of intriguing objects.

Some stalls had a particular focus, like this one which specialized in wacky stereo equipment. (The records here weren’t for sale, much to my husband’s disappointment.)

There seemed to be a little bit of everything. Really, when do you get to see a primary-colored ’80s chair next to a stuffed mountain goat (or whatever the hell that thing is)?

There were a ton of things that I loved but had to leave behind. Like these amazing (and huge) chairs. (Yes, that is the ghostly image of me and my husband reflected in the glass.)

Other stuff was small enough to bring back, but just too pricey. I mean, things seemed to have typical high-end antique-mall prices … then factor in a super-crappy exchange rate, and it just wasn’t worth it. Even though some of it was reeeeally cool.

There were some stands with tons of funky old books. I cracked up at “Le Crapouillot.” How great would it be if that really were the French word for crap?

I was intrigued by that box of vintage photos, but then realized they were movie stills. Which explained the high prices (I guess). Then I found a box of actual old snapshots. These were cheaper, but still over $2 apiece … not cheap enough to really go crazy. I dug through a little, but didn’t find any that I had to have. They were nice, but not any nicer than the domestic ones I see at sales for way less. (But of course, now that I’m not there, I’m thinking “there must have been some really cool ones in there somewhere!” Sigh.)

My husband found a booth with stacks of records that actually were for sale, so I left him to dig through there. Meanwhile, I found one stall with tons of framed prints. Some of them looked like vintage fabric patterns and the woman told me they were indeed textile designs. I loved them, but they were like $100 and up. (And unfortunately, this booth had a “no photos” sign up.) I did find some cheaper framed 19th century hand-colored prints that were really cool, with old botanical and anatomical illustrations, so I picked up a few of those, including one as a gift for Meghan illustrating the anatomy of a mollusk. (Trust me, it’s cooler than it sounds.) The seller was really nice so I asked her if there was an area outside where people were selling used items, and she told me that you could find everything at the flea market. Everything. Then she added that she personally would never shop there.

Walking outside I felt sure that somewhere out there the junk bounty was waiting … and yet, I didn’t really want to spend our precious last few hours in Paris digging through crap! So that was the end of our French flea market experience.

There is only one more thing I must share with you and while it is not truly related to our blog, I feel certain that some of you will appreciate the odd display in this storefront window …

I guess they wanted you to know how well their rat traps work. And their rat poisons, too. (These ones look much perkier. Even though they’re, you know, dead.)

Freaky, huh?

So … it wasn’t the most junk-huntingest vacation ever. But until someone wants to sponsor us to go on a Yard Sale Bloodbath World Tour, it’s going to have to do.

I’ve been back from my vacation for two weeks now and while junking wasn’t the main focus, of course I got a little in! I went to London for about twelve days. I was really hoping to visit a car boot sale — having been fascinated by the concept ever since I first heard the term.

In the UK, the boot of the car is what we here in the US would refer to as the trunk. (So if this was a British blog, we’d have to call our Junk In My Trunk category something different … like Loot In My Boot. Ha!) Apparently rather than having sales out front of their homes, people drive to a set spot with all the crap they can cram into their trunk, er, boot … and then offer it up for sale. From what I gather there are regular sellers as well as people who come on a one-off basis to declutterify. I even heard some shocking stories about how the regulars will go around early and buy up all the good stuff from the newcomers (sometimes pretending to be befuddled average joe shoppers), then sell it themselves at jacked up prices! It all sounded quite fascinating, but unfortunately I was only in town for one weekend, during which I was way too jetlagged to make it out of the house before noon … at which point we had other stuff to do. Including hitting Old Spitalfields Market.

I went to this market on a previous visit and really liked it. There are stalls set up in two different areas. One of them is pretty much all craft stuff (with a lot of cool vendors) and one had some vintage stalls mixed in … although not nearly as much as I’d remembered from last time. (I see now on the web site that Thursday is antiques day, so maybe we should’ve gone then … oh well.) I drooled over some amazing vintage glasses frames, but with the sucky exchange rate I just couldn’t justify the cost. Sadly, my camera’s battery died right after taking the above shot, so I can’t show you any of them. There were also about a dozen sellers with stuff set out on the street a couple blocks away, but you’ll just have to take my word that it was all crap.

I did hit a couple of thrift stores — or charity shops as they are known over there.

These were much cleaner and smaller than your typical US thrift store, and seem like more of a place to find good deals on items you’d otherwise buy new than places to uncover crazy unheard-of junky treasures. In other words, useful but kinda boring.

I mean, look at these neatly sorted clothes racks. It has more of a regular retail vibe than secondhand, no?

One of them did have a pretty great book selection, and I probably would have bought a few if I hadn’t just picked up a couple of very random titles at these outdoor book stalls.

These rows and rows of tables (from a few different sellers) were located along the South Bank of the Thames river and seemed to have a steady stream of customers. Most of the books were about 3 or 4 pounds (which is about twice as much in dollars), although a few more desirable items were priced higher.

So, if I wasn’t junking, what was I doing? Lots of stuff, including eating some amazing food and visiting quite a few museums. Most of that had absolutely nothing to do with the stuff we talk about in this blog, but there was one art exhibit that I think might be of interest.

The Serpentine Gallery had a show by Richard Prince, who I knew nothing about before going in. I was thrilled to find that his Nurse series of paintings had drawn inspiration from vintage paperbacks — and the ones in this show were even displayed with the books themselves!

His site shows a bunch more of the paintings (without their books).

So, if I was gone for nearly two weeks, but only in London for one weekend … where was I the other weekend? You’ll just have to wait to find out!

A few weeks ago I went back to Omaha for a reunion. Unlike my last visit, I was pretty limited on time for getting in some solid thrifting. I made sure I had a chance to hit up one of my favorite old haunts. I wrote about the greatness that is New Life Thrift a while back, and it’s still amazing.

Before I even walked in the door, I noticed this sign in the window.

I thought it was really strange that they would need to have a no guns sign in the window. Why? Well, turns out Omaha has a change in the concealed weapons permit law. What little I was able to gather is that if you don’t want someone to come into your place of business with a concealed weapon, you have to post something on your front door.

The first song I hear when I walk in is the Standells “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White” — is this the best thrift store in the world or what?

As always the place has tons of clothing, most of it priced in the $2 to $3 range (with mark-it wax pens and two staples) and often marked down to prices like 60 cents.

I was pretty restrained this time since I didn’t have much room to bring anything home, but I did pick up a few choice items.

I have been back in Seattle for over a month, and as winter has set in we aren’t thinking of yard sales as much as we usually do. I have had the last bit of my Omaha blog hanging over my head and slowly my mind is getting more fuzzy about what I purchased and what stores I hit.

Omaha has TONS of thrift stores, and I found my love of junking from going to thrift stores there while in high school. Sadly, many of my favorite stores have either closed or been taken over by a chain thrift store. My biggest disappointment was the closing of the best and largest Salvation Army that I have ever been to.

One of my faves is still going strong: The New Life Thrift Store, on the outskirts of Omaha in Bellevue, NE.

The prices are dirt cheap and its overall quality is super high. Plus, the staff is genuinely nice. They have some of the best prices in Omaha. AND they have a bizarre room of T.V sets.

I took a photo of our cart (sort of like our trunk photos) and you can tell that it’s filled. My friend Kelly bought maternity dresses and ice skates. I spent $14.85 and bought 18 men’s shirts (at prices ranging from 50 cents to 99 cents) and one woman’s dress for $1.95.

One addition since the last time I was in Omaha is “the bins.”

They are much smaller than the Portland bins, and less sketchy. When I say less sketchy, I mean that you aren’t going to cut your hand open trying to dig a pair of pants out of a bin.

One thing you should know if you want to thrift in Nebraska or Iowa is that you can’t go on Sunday since they are closed. This is the bible belt. I forgot this fact and tried to go hit some places in Council Bluffs, Iowa. All of them were closed.

Now, antique malls can be really good. Most of them are in the Old Market in downtown Omaha. One exception is the Brass Armadillo which boasts an insane amount of vendors (375 in 30,000 square feet) and really it’s HUGE. I had great luck here 5 years ago, but this time, eh. Nothing. I did take this amazing photo of this chalkware Nebraska cow that I secretly wanted to buy, but it was just too large.

The flipside of that experience is Second Chance Antiques. A place that I have followed to 3 locations and over 20 years. It’s a little messy and oddly organized, but the prices are fair and the quality is high.

Across the street from Second Chance is Fairmont Antiques, filled with tons of vendors with various levels of quality and price. I did find a dealer after my own heart with her space almost 100% filled with purses.

While I was in the Midwest I was able to hit up some sales with an old friend and his sale partner in Omaha, Nebraska. Marc and Ron hit sales and auctions every weekend with a cast of characters that rival the pickers in Seattle.

A couple of things that set these two apart from me and Jenny is that they are both professional pickers and they start going to sales at 6:30 AM. The first time we went out was the day after I got there. The 6:30 wake-up call was a little harsh since it’s two hours later in Omaha and the thought of my body clock going to sales at 4:30 AM is even out of the realm of my obsessive compulsion for sales.

A few differences between sales in Omaha and Seattle: They have sales on Thursday & Friday. They have more auctions then we have. It’s not that uncommon for the entire contents of a house to be pulled outside and auctioned off.

Another oddball thing I noticed at the sales was the lack of women. There really aren’t very many females who hit the sales early. In most cases I was the only one there.

So, the overall plan for sales in Omaha is this: Look over all the sales in the paper (they don’t use craigslist) and work out the top three or four sales to go to. Narrow it down to the one sale to hit first, and be there two hours early to get numbers and/or be the first in line.

This works out well, except if the sale is really bad and you wasted an hour waiting in the car or on someone’s porch for a bad sale. They pass the time by talking about scores that other pickers found before them, or by teasing each other. The best line was Marc telling Ron that he needed Imodium for his mouth.

While waiting outside at one sale, they pulled this car onto the lawn and put up flags.

At another sale they had boxes and boxes of items sealed into box tops with tape around them. If you wanted one item you had to buy the whole box. It was sort of like the bags of jewelry you used to find at thrift stores. Marc said that Heartland Estate Sales was the only company that did this.

One of my favorite sales was an estate sale of a former Tangier Shriner and his wife.

It was a decent sized house and I purchased a really cool Tangier embroidered shirt and hat (instant Halloween costume for next year) and a group photo of some Shriners from the ’60s. They had a lot of other interesting items, too.

Some of the sales we hit just didn’t seem worth the time, but how great are the sales in any town in early November?

While I was in Iowa we took an afternoon and drove to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Since I had never been there before we only went to thrift stores that we just happened by.

Since it was Halloween, some of the workers at the Goodwill had dressed up. One gentleman let me take this photo of him in his traditional Pow Wow outfit, with his Goodwill vest over it. He was a good sport.

Since I had never gone thrifting on Halloween before, I had no idea how many people go to thrift stores very late in the day to get costumes. It’s almost 5:00 p.m. and now you are looking for a costume?

The thrift stores in Sioux Falls are pretty good. I picked up a three-piece 50′s sweater dress, a skirt, and a few other items. The thought of having to mail items back home kept me pretty sane in my purchases, but Sioux Falls Thrift shops are worth a look if you find yourself here.