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!