Last weekend was the event we’d been waiting for: West Seattle Garage Sale Day! This is the fifth year running we have blogged about this neighborhood sale day, which by now is probably the biggest one in town. We got there an hour before the official start time this year and got some delicious baked goods, then headed out to see what was open already.
The first signs we saw were on the main drag.
I think this was the first place we hit last year, too. I didn’t remember it being that great, but we stopped to check it out.
None of us bought anything. They had some okay books, but some of them were priced at ten dollars! If it is selling in the store for $13, you cannot sell it for $10 at your sale — let’s get real.
We turned off the main drag and found a sale that was still setting up, and hadn’t put all their signs out yet.
They were letting people look around and I kept thinking I’d find something, but it didn’t happen.
We plodded along through a bunch of other sales. Things were really not looking so good for a while …
It didn’t help when we hit the sale where they were playing Grateful Dead music and trying to get rid of a bajillion Jerry Garcia ties.
Then Karl ran into some guy that he knew and he said there was a sale nearby with records, so we decided to check it out. Sadly, some other dude had already grabbed up many of the more intriguing items.
I started flipping through a box … ack! It’s our old pal, Joanie Greggains!
(Yes, that dog was checking out the records too.) She has definitely gone through a few different looks, but she never seems to be without her legwarmers.
I got bored with the records fairly quickly and started looking through other stuff. You know how on our About page we say that thing about “oh my god, I can’t believe that person was trying to sell their used granny panties�
At this point I had bought like two books and that was it. We veered off into a different neighborhood, getting close to the amazing Korla Pandit sale we hit last time — we looked around for the house, but never found it (I’m guessing it had been demolished and already rebuilt). And naturally we found plenty of new insipid ways to amuse ourselves while we made the rounds. In the past, this has taken the form of talking like robots or using the names of Heart songs as bad puns. This year we covered a lot of bases, singing about Babee Tenda to the tune of the Baby Monkey Riding On A Pig song (which has a nasty habit of getting lodged in one’s head), and somehow starting to say “Yard Sard” with a demented Boston-ish accent, so it sounded like “yaaaaaaaaaaaahd saaaaaaaaaahd.” We also invoked one of our all-time favorite signs, “Nice Quality,” repeatedly saying it in a breathy voice. I think that might have started after we saw this.
After a few unremarkable stops we encountered this fantastic sign.
How could we skip that? When we got there, we found this out front.
They didn’t have a huge spread … but what they had was fantastic. Tons of art books ranging from fifty cents to five dollars, and a small but pretty rad selection of vintage and new artsy/designerish women’s clothing. Sadly, the shoes were too small for Meghan and I, but we all bought a bunch stuff here … enough that another bank run was going to be necessary. I paid up first and went out to the car, and when Karl and Meghan came back I learned that I had missed out on the actual dog from the sign coming out to make an appearance! Meghan and Karl seemed quite charmed.
High on our yard-sale-score crack, we pulled onto another street where a few sales were happening. When we saw this setup, Karl almost shrieked with delight: “Look, farm fresh eggs!!!”
But no. It was golf balls. Some guy, sitting out in his driveway, selling nothing but golf balls in egg cartons. Nothing else on that street was good either. And then it seemed like we hit another lull.
We did find some interesting and odd items … like this box marked “Ammunition For Cannon With Explosive Projectile” and its contents.
But perhaps the oddest find of the day was this pair of deer heads.
We have seen plenty of antlers before, but a pair of unmounted heads is just strange. Especially when they seem to be staring at you.
We decided it was time for lunch, after stopping at whatever we came across on the way. A few more duds, and then a sale with a bunch of boxed books and magazines. The first one I looked in was this.
I did not need to own this, but it made me curious about the rest. Sure enough, we all started digging things out. There were a lot of music books and weird literature, many of them advance reader copies. Karl also found some CDs. And then I ended up with my score of the day: a tall vintage standing lamp with three silver dome shades. When I asked the guy how much it was, he said “Oh, I really love that lamp.” That’s usually bad, right? I was wondering what kind of crazy price he was going to ask for, and then he said “how about ten bucks?” Sold! Meghan also picked up a vintage wool blanket with rainbow stripes. It turned out to be one of the best sales of the day.
After lunch we couldn’t help but make just a few more stops, even pulling into an alley (something we usually are wary of) to hit this sale. They had a lot of art …
Some of it was kitschy and kinda cool.
And then there was this.
They also had this amazing condom dispenser cover from some bathroom of yore! Sadly, it was $50.
As we left I noticed this beer can sitting by some candles … yep, it was cold and half-full.
By the time we finally rolled on home, the trunk was full, the back seat was popped open to fit the lamp through, and there were things piled up throughout the car.
Here’s what it looked like after Karl unloaded his items, just so you can see a bit more …
We all agreed that overall it didn’t seem quite as bountiful — or as bizarre — as years past. But thanks mostly to a few good sales, we certainly made a haul!
