Last Saturday was the annual West Seattle neighborhood sale. It seems like it’s turned into the mecca that Phinney once was, before they started moving the sale date back and forth. Off and on we have hit this sale together, sometimes with guest stars, for the last 6 or 7 years or however long it’s been going on. It is always pretty good. We belly-ached a little that it didn’t seem as good as it has been in previous years, but that could be a sign of the times, change in the folks that live there, or just us needing to complain.

We met Karl at Bakery Nouveau. There was a line out the door, but it was worth the wait. After baked goods were procured, we had a talk about what area to hit first. Karl said that there was a sale he wanted to hit (read RECORDS) way on the other side of town. Of course when we arrived, the woman said “oh, the records aren’t here yet!” Honestly this didn’t matter too much, since there were plenty of sales to hit just a few blocks away.

At one sale and I asked the seller about all her stuff in the tree. Her reply: “Oh, you mean my kayak tree?”

Jenny mentioned an estate sale that had been listed on craigslist, but wasn’t on the official West Seattle sale map.

When we pulled up the first thing we saw was this amazing dinette set. It was purchased and hauled away before we even left the sale.

This sale turned out to have tons of great stuff. I picked up a ton of vintage ball jars, and Karl found a really cool starburst clock (that he promptly dropped on the ground and broke)

Jenny was sad that the books all seemed super musty.

I found some awesome Bakelite corn cob holders. Jenny wanted to know about these boxes, thinking maybe they were the bank robber dye packs. When I asked about them the woman told me that she had been a stewardess and you could toss this dye onto someone if they attacked you. She used to carry it while walking to her car in the parking lot.

I was super excited about my stuff, but there were no prices. I kept trying to tell the woman at the sale that I was ready to get totaled up, but every time another person at the sale would grab her and pull her away from me. I started to get a little pissy about the whole thing. After 20 minutes I just made up what I thought was a fair total, asked her if that was okay and gave her some money. Otherwise we would have been there all day.

For some reason I started humming the tune to the limbo and Jenny said it was going through her head too. Karl confessed he had been singing it earlier. He kept that going all day long, sometimes attempting to add creative lyrics.

We hit a few more sales, and then onto the main drag we saw this sign.

We have seen some amazing signs, but this is taking it to a new level. Come witness the magic? WOW! I pulled over in traffic to take that photo.

They had tons of signs up, but sadly the signs were the best thing about the sale.

When we got there, it looked so bad we didn’t even get out of the car.

And it had absolutely no unicorn magic.

The car started to get more full and we needed to take a quick break for a bank machine run and lunch. Then the next stop was this huge corner sale.

While parking, a guy walked away from the sale holding the first Heart record under his arm. Karl sarcastically whined about someone making that score. I said, “You should go all Crazy On Him.” Get it? Karl said, “And then take it and yell BARRACUDA!” Jenny chimed in, “You know why Karl can do that? Because he’s a Magic Man.” Yes, we were cracking ourselves up.

There’s more to tell, but I’ll let Jenny share some of the more insane items we encountered and show you the haul.