Last weekend was the Whittier Heights neighborhood garage sale day. This is sometimes good, sometimes “eh.” And there is always a high concentration of kid stuff.

But it’s always nice when we don’t have to make a list and can just drive around a neighborhood hitting a bunch of sales at once. This year it was grey and a little drizzly when we set out, and when we started making the rounds, it didn’t look great. A lot of it looked like this.

And this.

The ads had said “maps available at sales.” None of them seemed to have any, but after a while we found this and grabbed one.

Sadly, these weren’t much help. At least half of the marked spots had no sale in sight — people probably saw the weather and decided to skip it. But we kept driving, finding a few bright spots. Like the sale with this jail jumpsuit.

“It’s unisex!” the guy told us. Um, thanks? They also had this groovy cocktail set.

Another sale seemed to have been stocked from some ill-advised late-night TV shopping.

We cracked up at this “pricing station” inside a van that was being used to hold up a tarp.

We picked up a couple of things, but the stuff was mostly wet and mostly bad.

Finally we found a sale with some interesting old signs. Could this be where we get lucky?

It was not. So we decided: “New neighborhood!” We headed off toward an estate sale, spotting signs for a moving sale on the way. They had a ton of records, but nothing great. This one cracked me up — it would have fit in perfectly with my post about wacky LP covers.

Meghan bought a CD box set from the woman (who looked up what it went for on her phone before agreeing to come down a few bucks) and then wanted to purchase something from the next door neighbor’s sale … we waited around for a good five minutes for that neighbor to return and take her money, but she never did. Oh well!

Onward to the estate sale. At least they had parking …

… and a possibly foreboding sign.

We made our way to the house, passing these metal shelves – priced at $5 each!

So cheap, and so practical for storage, but way too huge for us to even think about getting home. So we went on in. Despite the warning, it wasn’t a particularly scary sale (lord knows we have been to plenty of truly frightening ones). And after all those soggy yards it was nice to be able to walk around inside and look over a ton of crap in one place. Even if most of it really was crap.

This kitty painting cracked me up. Then it started to scare me. Then it started to become sort of enthralling. I took a picture and walked away before I could lose my mind and bring it home with me.

There was also a box of fridge magnets, some of which walked a very fine line between silly and depressing.

We left empty-handed and headed in the general direction of home, making a couple of stops on the way.

This sale had a selection of strange framed drawings.

The seller was a nice young lady. Apparently, she could be persuaded to make you a cup of coffee.

But we did not try to persuade her. I seem to remember purchasing something here but honestly? It’s a blur. I bought about four things the whole day and none of them were terribly exciting. A trunk shot would be waaaaay too pathetic.