Monday, September 17, 2007

Hipster Garage Sales

The great thing about going to garage sales in Chicago is that it's not all your typical suburban-driveway-and-folding-card-table, ruffled-bedskirts-and-Tom-Clancy-novel tag sale crap. And sure, that's partly because, with 3+ million people crammed into a 25-mile radius you're bound to find something more than a table lamp that reeks of cat urine and a Precious Moments figurine. Most of the vintage stuff I posted on Saturday still belonged to the original owner, and had not yet been purchased for decorative or, dare I say, ironic purposes.

But there are a certain breed of garage sale proprietors that, God bless them, get their tight-jeaned asses out of bed before 11 a.m. to schlep their hulking mass of possessions out on the sidewalk, offering up their unique mix of vintage, cheeky, and visually stunning artifacts for the picking, and those folks, ladies and gentlemen, are the hipsters.

Shopping at a hipster garage sale is like shopping at a consignment shop for clothing versus a thrift store: someone has already done the best picking for you. I make a point of circling hipster garage sale ads each week and getting to them at the crack of noon (seriously, they open at noon) so I have first dibs over all the stuff they don't want to move to Portland, or take with them to Spain for a year. As much as they create a nuisance to the general population with their dark aviator glasses and tall bikes, they do provide a service by liquidating their possessions with such alarming frequency to pay rent, bail someone out of jail, or just plain get beer money.

And what possessions they have! Awesome vinyl and CD collections (I've purchased every last Tortoise album from various hipster yard sales), trendy clothing and furniture, awesome vintage textiles and various other oddities (a stuffed bat, perhaps?). All for a low, low price and a unique sense of irony.

In fact, check out a recent find from a hipster garage sale on Rice, just east of Western (note the Post-It note, affixed by the hipsters themselves):




Where to find these hipster garage sales? As a general rule, hipsters only advertise on craigslist. Don't expect them to pay for a garage sale ad or take the time to call the newspaper to post it. To find a hipster garage sale in Chicago, just scroll down the craigslist Garage Sale category in search of addresses, and neighborhoods, that occur in this geographical area:


View Larger Map


Then look for keywords such as: vinyl records, tiki, vintage, bike, leather, drum, moving to Portland, etc.

To get you started, I'll provide an example:

Everything must go! 2042 W McLean Ave. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Kitchen appliances, household goods, tools + bicycle parts and junk, knickknacks, records, furniture and furnishings, candles, candlesticks, potpourri, rock posters, vintage women's clothing, Charvel bass guitar, rack toms, drum stand, guitar stand, drum sticks & brushes, and more.

Note that it starts at 11 a.m. - an obvious sign of a hipster sale. And it contains bike parts, records, guitars, drum sticks and rock posters. Hipster, hipster, hipster! Now, go hunt down some of your own... and I'll see you at the crack of noon next Saturday.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

How to Bargain at a Garage Sale (It Helps to Be Heartless)

Yesterday Jessie wanted to know how we go about getting lower prices at garage sales. Do we just ask? What exact phrasing is used? How do you know when you're paying too much, or asking too little?

After doing this for so long, I forgot that people who don't spend their entire weekends on other people's lawns and parking spaces don't naturally affect a cold stare and a smirk when paying for their junk and, in fact, get intimidated at the very thought of asking for a price other than the (usually high) prices marked on most items.

I was thinking about this today as I was crouched in someone's alley underneath the El tracks at Granville over a row of DVDs priced $3 each or 2 for $5. And then I heard it. It started with a scream, the kind of scream a mother lets out when her baby ends up in the mouth of a dingo. Then a loud electrical pop, like when a lightbulb blows out, but loud, like a firecracker. Then the El brakes, metal grinding, and yelling. Lots of yelling. And more screaming.

"What the...?" The half-dozen garage sale customers and I turned our attention to the train stop above our heads.

"What the hell just happened?" I asked.

"Somebody jumped," the woman selling the DVDs said. I guess she knew; she lives right by the El.

Slowly everyone got to their feet, dropped what they were doing and stared up at the train. We couldn't see anything. But we could hear that something was very, very wrong. More screaming, more yelling, and then sirens in the distance.

"Good, they called somebody already," the girl's boyfriend said as he headed to closer to the scene to get a better look.

"Jesus," people mumbled.

Casual, neighborly discussion of recent suicides-by-train, overdoses and traffic accidents ensued, until the boyfriend returned and did the universal sign for "decapitation" for his the rapt spectators. He then informed us that, according to the standers-by he'd just questioned, it was a male (now headless), certainly a suicide.

More shrugs from the garage sale audience. Several people put down the clothes and bulb vases they were looking at and sauntered out into the street where the firetrucks now were. And then one guy goes:

"Hey, will you take a dollar for this?"

Ruthless bargaining knows no limits.



Katherine's Rules for Ruthless Garage Sale Bargaining

Know your price. The best way to get the best price for something is to know, as I once heard a Guatemalan street vendor put so eloquently, "how much less price you pay." How much less price you pay? A better way of saying this might be, "What is it worth to you?" You might pay 30 dollars for a coffee table without blinking, but to me, because I go to so many garage sales, coffee tables are a dime a dozen. I swear, if garage sales were a country, coffee tables would be the standard currency. So I have no trouble saying, "Would you take five for this?"

Lowball, lowball, lowball. I know this is what scares everyone the most, but on big ticket items, you have to start low. Take the chairs I bought yesterday for instance. There were 6 awesome dining room chairs with no price. I wanted them so bad, I was nervous. But I coolly asked, "How much do you want for these?"

The guy wouldn't give me a straight price (a pretty good tactic for the sale host, I must say), forcing me to spit out my own price first. So I lowballed. "Oh, how about ten each?" (The secret here is: I would pay twenty.) He countered with, "It's early, I really don't want to get rid of them for that price yet," and ended it there. (What a tactic, again, I must say!) I hung out for a few minutes, then told him, "Okay, I think I'm going to buy these chairs," and got out my purse, like I was going to pay him. He goes, "What price did we agree on?" and I say, "I said ten?" and he goes, "Oh, I don't think I can let them go for less than 20 yet," so I said, "I thought you said fifteen," and he goes, "Did I?" and I go, "Would you do fifteen?" and he goes, "Sure." Behold, the power of the lowball! And behold, the chairs:







Harness the power of 75 cents Look, if someone makes the mistake of putting 75 cent price tags on everything, just gather a bunch of them and make up a number. What's 17 times 75 cents? See? You don't know. Would you take five dollars? Sure? Do the math. I just beat you out of 8 bucks.

Pay garage sale value, not retail value. As I've mentioned previously on this blog, it doesn't matter what someone originally paid for it, now that it's in their front yard on a Saturday at 10:30 a.m., it's only worth what someone will pay for it at a garage sale. And maybe you don't go to sales 4/7 days a week like some of us do, so allow me to give you a few basic price points, starting with the "I'd be surprised to see it for that cheap!" to "I'd never pay more than this for it."
  • Clothes - $0.25---3.00
  • Shoes - $0.50---5.00
  • Coats - $2.00---10.00
  • Coffee Table - $3.00---25.00
  • CDs - $0.50--3.00
  • Books - $.25---3.00
  • Lamps - $3.00---15.00
  • DVDs - $1.00---5.00
  • Desk or Kitchen Table - $10.00--50.00
  • Television - $5.00---20.00
  • Dishes - $.50--2.00 each
  • Pet carrying kennel - $1.00--3.00
  • Area rug - $3.00---25.00
  • Box fan - $1.00---3.00
  • Window unit A/C - $10.00---50.00


Well, you get the idea.

Ask yourself, "Will I see it again?" Everyone has Ikea furniture, David Sedaris books and Counting Crows CDs. But not everyone has a Dansk teak salad bowl with matching utensils or a real human skeleton. The more garage sales you go to, the better idea you'll have of what you're bound to see again, and therefore, can walk away from if the price isn't right.

Buy in bulk. The more you buy, the more likely you are to get a deal. So combine items with your friends or fill a whole box if you can.

Keep your highest price in the back of your mind. Don't get intimidated when someone won't accept your lowball. Keep the highest price you're willing to pay in mind and walk away if their prices exceeds it, even after bargaining.

Round down, way down. I do this a lot when I buy books, CDs, jewelry or silverware... anything you can buy in bulk. If the prices are marked by piece, round up $7.50 worth of stuff and then offer five. Give yourself lots of wiggle room.

Drop the "old world" crap and just ask. Lots of these old matryoshkas want to ask the price, then just shake their head and go, "No.... no," confusing the fuck out of these yuppies who are scared they priced everything wrong anyway. The best way to bargain is just to ask, outright, how much you want to pay for the item (lowball, that is). Chances are, the person will just go, "Sure!" So, repeat after me: "Will you take a dollar for this?"

Oh, and if you don't believe me about the train accident thing:

Click here.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Super-Cute Vintage in Dogville

Everyone had a dog at the yard sales this Saturday. And for the first time, one of my hard-partying friends actually went to bed early enough on Friday night to join Ed and I on a Saturday morning. Here's Jessie:



Ed, not to be outdone, stopped to pet the dogs too.




Jessie is furnishing a new apartment, which got me looking at all kinds of cute decorations, household items and furniture. Jessie found this awesome owl, and bought it!




Check out this awesome decanter:




This $10 set of glasses would have been awesome if it was a.) complete and b.) cost 2 dollars.




Oh, and remember these two blasts from the past? I was just having a conversation with my friend Rich about "tuning in" the channel you had to tape on a VCR in 1985. Well, sure enough, here's a VCR with dials!




And Jessie totally freaked out over this Black Cauldron game.




Super-cute cheese serving tray:




And who couldn't use a nice wall-mounted plant holder? I could.... but I didn't buy it.




I didn't buy this purse, either, but I thought someone sure would like it:




Yet another thing I thought was super-cute and didn't buy:


(Not really sure what it's for, but I'd make a nice center serving piece out of it.)


This lovely vinyl snap case contained a thread/sewing kit, but it might make a nice tampon holder, too:




And how about this awesome Schlitz flashlight that Ed found:






Hot fashions:





Jessie ended up buying this mirror, so cute! I think it was a dollar.




And after much deliberation (and a phone call do Rhonda, who has the Danny's Dogwalkers minivan), I decided to purchase all six of these lovely modern bent wood and chrome dining room chairs at a negotiated price of $15 each (that's $90 for all of them, if you did the math). A lot of money to drop at a garage sale, but I'd never see chairs like this again for that price, and they go great in my dining room. I'll never have to buy dining room chairs again.


Thanks for the ride, Rhonda!


Now for two awesome desks, which we did not buy.

The mirror:




And the map:




I really liked this almost paint-by-number piece, but it didn't really have a frame, so I left it in the front yard.




And last, another item for the "what the...?" list:

Need a ___________ keychain?