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:


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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.