My parents were in town last weekend. We had non-sale-related plans on Saturday, so we thought we’d hit a few Friday morning sales. Since there usually aren’t that many sales on Fridays I figured it was a perfect time to try out iGarageSale – an iPhone app that places sale listings from Craigslist onto a handy map so you can see what’s nearby. I found a couple in our neighborhood and a few more a little further out that seemed promising, and we headed off.

One of our first stops was a church sale, which ended up being the same church we’d been at as part of the Crown Hill Garage Sale Day. It had been awful then, but a different organization was having the sale this time, and there was a lot more stuff. I still figured it might be a bust, but then I wandered down the hall to a sort of hidden area and found a cute little box purse with a ’60s looking “YES” painted on it. I opened it up and discovered that despite its complete lack of bejeweledness, it was an Enid Collins purse, and even had a mirror inside. Score!

On the way out I noticed this box of “men’s shoes.” Um, if you say so …

After one boring sale and one that wasn’t actually happening we headed off to something billed as a “three-estate sale.” There was stuff spread around all outside the house. One of the first things I noticed was this sign up on the wall.

Don’t strain your eyes on the blurriness, I’ll tell you what it says: “If your reading this it probably means Im DEAD! Tell my family I love them. Good bye … forever (we can make love in heaven)”

Creepy, no? I asked the seller what the deal was, and she got sort of a strange look on her face. For a second I wondered if perhaps there really was a death story involved and if I shouldn’t have brought it up so casually. Then her look became one of pure bored irritation and she replied, “I’m pretty sure it’s just a joke.” Still no explanation why it was on the wall of the house, but I could tell that more questions were not encouraged.

There was definitely an odd hodge-podge of stuff. My dad made a comment about how these dogs were maybe a little too excited to see Santa.

There were a couple of stuffed dogs whose price tags included their names. I think sometimes you really can give a potential buyer too much information.

This lady was so lovely. Too bad about her arm.

There was more stuff set up inside, and it kind of felt like an antique mall space — I wondered if someone used to have one and was selling off what was left? Or maybe it really was from someone’s estate who was really into collecting glassware and such. Everything in the room was priced, and laid out very nicely.

Then there was another room down the hall that had more dishes … set up in front of a painted sign for the Amazing Alfredo, big enough to cover the entire wall.

They had some nice stuff, but nothing I fell in love with, so I left empty-handed. But on the way there we’d seen signs for another estate sale, so we headed off to that one. This sign in front cracked me up, especially knowing how the hardcore estate-salers can get kind of crazed and bloodthirsty waiting for a sale to open up.

I walked into a bedroom and encountered this rather large school project on “The History of Reggae Music And Bob Marley.” All that work, and now it was on sale for fifty cents! I hope they at least got an A.

It’s always cool to come across old family portraits like these.

And I was delighted to spot this built-in file cabinet in another bedroom. We’ve seen some weird built-in stuff at estate sales before (the pull-out toaster is an all-time fave), but I think this is a first.

Since we’d ended up further afield than I’d expected, I whipped out the ol’ phone and consulted iGarageSale again … and discovered another estate sale just a few blocks away! I wouldn’t have even known it was there, so that was pretty cool. Most of their stuff was at once fancy and boring (a deadly combo in my book), but I did get a pink Russel Wright bowl for $2. Then right when we thought we were done for the day we stumbled upon an un-craigslisted block sale — but alas, all of the sales were lame.

The haul was pretty paltry compared to a typical Yard Sale Bloodbath Saturday, but we were all happy with what we got.

Me: Enid Collins box purse and pink Russel Wright bowl.
Mom: Pyrex dish.
Dad: Rainbow-colored outdoor hanging thing (that’s actually the real name. Look it up), hose splitter, Seabiscuit documentary DVD, The Spell Of The Yukon book, and three CDs.

This was a pretty big weekend, since the annual Phinney sale and the Olympic Manor sale ended up both being on the same day. I have been belly-aching about this for a couple of months, but I managed to have one of my best days, thanks to one sale.

After hitting a couple of sales on the way to Phinney Ridge, I was speeding down 74th Ave. Karl hollered out that I had driven right past a sale.

The first thing I saw were some amazing green dinette chairs. But they had just been sold — argh! We started looking through the rest of the stuff, and noticed the sellers hadn’t quite finished their breakfast yet.

They had tons of stuff, but sadly some of it had been set up on Friday and was sort of dewy. This didn’t seem to be the case for the clothing or shoes, but the cups and bowls were damp. There was a stack of old Look and Life magazines that had been under a towel held down by a large rock — not the best situation.

In the first couple of minutes, I grabbed three pairs of 1940’s shoes. Karl usually lets me have first crack at the clothing, but I usually let him take first crack at any box of LPs at a sale, so it works out. Jenny looked around some, but she quickly got sort of bored with the whole sale. I did make her come over and look into the strange box of vintage pills.

Not something you see on a regular basis. Especially when they still have some of the pills inside. Eek!

One of the guys at the sale said there was more stuff inside, so I asked him to bring out more clothing for me, which he did. So many coats, dresses, shoes, scarves and hats. All vintage, lots of it really great. The bummer? Only the older woman (named “Jenny” also, adding confusion whenever I called over to our Jenny) could work out the prices. And the prices made no sense. One dress that was just okay would be $7.25, then some amazing ’40s number would be $2.50. An extra large Bauer pot was $20, a box of vintage wallpaper $5. And this all took forever, even with our Jenny working a calculator, Karl handing the woman items one at a time to keep things moving, and me taking the stuff to the car. Jenny was really starting to lose her cool. I know that she was excited for me, but she was ready to get on with the other sales. We spent way too long at this sale, but it was so worth it. My “vintage adrenaline” was pumping hard!

Karl and I picked up enough stuff to fill up the trunk and half the back seat. The trunk photo doesn’t even do this justice. We had to drop everything back at my house before we could hit any more sales.

Around 1:00 both Karl and I ended up going back to the sale. Since I had told one of the guys helping at the sale what I was looking for, they had kept some of the clothing in the house for me and started bringing out piles of stuff. I ended up scoring a 50s vintage Hawaiian shirt. Karl was a little upset, but seemed to get over it when he figured out I was going to keep it. We both picked up a bunch more stuff. All told I spent around $200 at the sale and picked up some amazing items. The Phinney and Olympic Manor sales didn’t really pan out like I’d hoped, but after hitting the jackpot so big at this one, how can I complain?

Last Saturday was the day we’d been waiting for all summer: the annual Greenwood-Phinney neighborhood yard sale extravaganza. For at least a decade this has happened in late April and we’ve often referred to it as our “spring opener.” For some reason, this year they changed it to September. This might possibly have had something to do with the fact that last year’s sale day had snow … or it could’ve been for some other purpose. Whatever the reason, it really felt like the natural rhythm of the season had been thrown off. It didn’t help that they picked the same date as another neighborhood sale we always hit — Olympic Manor.

We figured we’d head out early, cruise through Phinney, and then maybe hit Oly Manor on the way back. We made a plan to meet up at 8:00. This might have been kind of stupid, since there weren’t actually any sales starting at 8:00. Not one! We used the time to get our pastry and coffee fix in early and hit the ATM, and then started stalking some of the sales on the way to the big she-bang. A few weren’t open yet, but as it got closer to 9:00 we found some that were ready. At our first stop Meghan found some cute ’50s framed drawings. I found (but did not purchase) this.

The next stop had listed vintage pottery. They weren’t kidding around! Great stuff, but they knew what they had. The prices seemed reasonable if you really collected that stuff, but kind of high for a random yard sale purchase.

The next sale had a very creative free box (or should I say freebarrow).

Everything in there was free, including the wheelbarrow itself. Karl pulled out a truly demented and wrong “Cat Lady” totebag. Note also the bizarro hand-knitted ’80s sweater, which wasn’t free (I think it was $3).

By this point it was about 8:45 and we were still on the outskirts of the actual neighborhood sale. We were driving along towards it when Karl suddenly yelled out “STOP!” Meghan and I had been too busy yakking to notice that we’d driven by a random sale. This sale that we hadn’t even known about turned out to be amazing — so amazing that it really deserves a whole post, so I will let Meghan cover the bases on that one later. Suffice it to say that we were there for over 45 minutes and had to go back home to empty out the trunk (AND back seat) when we finally got out of there. (Purely due to Karl and Meghan’s purchases. I don’t know if I’m somehow channeling Yard Sale Addict these days or what, but I bought nothing.)

After our drop-off, we beelined over to the Phinney sales. We noticed immediately that the usual crazed tangle of cars all trying to fit down narrow streets at the same time was missing. I’m not complaining about it being easier to get around, but it didn’t have the same manic vibe as usual. There seemed to be fewer sales, and definitely fewer shoppers. I think there is something about having it at the start of the season that really brings people out. We’re all itching to go to sales in April; by September, lots of people are kind of over it.

The first few sales we hit were really boring. Not even bad in an interesting way, just full of baby stuff, cheap kitchenware, and boring clothes. Well, some of them were boring — others were just hideous.

I’d printed out the official sale map, but we didn’t end up using it. There were enough sales that just meandering through the neighborhood seemed to work pretty well. A few sales even had extra signs up pointing the way.

We followed some bright pink signs to an estate sale. When we got there we weren’t sure if we were at the right sale — it just seemed like regular yard-sale stuff out front. Then we realized it stretched around the side of the house.

Most of the boxes were filled up with very crusty books. I managed to find a couple of choice items that weren’t too funkified. Both of them are from 1961 — isn’t that the year the first season of Mad Men takes place? They’d definitely fit right in: Stoned like a Statue: A Complete Survey of Drinking Cliches, Primitive, Classical, and Modern (with intro by Dean Martin!), and The Executive Coloring Book — completely un-colored-in. As I shelled out my buck twenty-five, the seller told me about how some relative had passed away fifteen years ago, and they’d just stored all his books in boxes until now. Like I couldn’t have figured that out from the stank.

Next we stumbled upon a sale where Karl knew one of the sellers! The sale stretched out through a carport and all through their yard. Sadly, there was not actually a dance hall.

I was excited to unearth an orange vintage bowling shirt hidden below a bunch of new-ish clothes. There was no design at all on the back, but the embroidered name was “Glenda,” so I was happy to cough up $2.

After stopping to get some water we decided to cruise over to Olympic Manor before calling it a day. It was already noon, so we figured everything would be pretty decimated at that point. Sure enough, we weren’t really feeling the vibe. We did stop at a house which seems to take part in the sale every year. Two years ago they had zillions of dolls. This year, there were only about a dozen. I was kind of amazed by these super-flaming ’80s Ken dolls (or Ken-like dolls — the hell if I know what they really are).

After just a few more fruitless stops, we decided it was quitting time. The trunk wasn’t as full as it had been earlier from that one sale (which you’ll hear about soon!), but we did okay …

Jenny was out of town this week, so it was just me and Karl. Friday was a massive bust. Both of us ended being disgusted with the whole idea of going to sales before 9:45 AM. It was so bad that it’s not even worth the time to talk about how bad it was.

I was wondering if we should even stay on the North End for sales on Saturday, but in the end there seemed to be tons of sales. Folks have started to take the whole “wacky Craigslist ad thing” to a new level. Things have changed from years ago when Jenny and I tried to put the word “craptastic” into a classified yard sale ad in the paper, and the word was refused by the woman working the classifieds.

One sale listed “Odd, interesting and blatantly normal items for sale!” (Isn’t that just about every single sale we go too?!) And free pen with every purchase! We did hit this sale and the woman was very aggressive about trying to get both of us to take a pen. I had seen their sign on Friday night and liked how they said the sale was better than their block letters.

Karl said he would arrive at 8:30, and at 7:50 I drove to hit some 8 a.m. sales, but boogied back to make sure I was at my house at 8:30. Karl on the other hand was running late, because he forgot the list. Later on he confessed that he also hit a few early morning sales that I think contributed to him being 20 minutes late. Why am I not surprised?

One of the first sales we hit was about three blocks from my house and I couldn’t resist sneaking a photo of the eagle blanket (a la 9/11, or is it more politically correct to say Sept. 11th?)

I thought the sale was pretty lame. I did see they had the sale again on Sunday. By Monday afternoon they wised up and created a huge free pile.

Then across the street we hit a very long driveway sale. Jenny and I had hit a sale here five years ago that was really good, but both Karl and I hightailed it out of there quick this time.

The yard sale and BBQ for Tilted Thunder Roller Derby was a must.

They had tons of stuff, most of which they hadn’t put out yet, but I wanted to give them some cash to help them pay for practice time.

We hit a few more okay sales, hardly blogworthy, but okay. Then an “ally” sale.

Karl made some comment about how that “would really bug English Major Jenny.” Then in true Jenny style I took the sign home with me. I was pretty stoked to find a small Le Creuset dutch oven for $10.

Karl kept wanting to hit a sale that started on Friday, and I was thinking if it’s so good why didn’t we hit it on Friday. Right? Well, she posted her ad after we already left for sales, and she told us at the sale that she had forgot to put the address in the ad.

The sale had black velvet paintings, Elvis, vintage clothing and tons of other fun oddball stuff.

Sadly, she was selling stuff to pay for her dog to get surgery.

One of the last sales we hit was a couple moving to Hawaii. Karl pointed and said “Look, Jay Reatard” while laughing. For the low low price of $35 was a crappy Flying V. Hmmm, should I buy it? Within about three minutes I called Jay and purchased the guitar. Karl thought this was a funny course of events.

Our last sale was the above mentioned “Free Pen Sale.” Okay, since I was called a bitch on the blog this week I almost feel bad saying this, but that is sort of the point of this blog, right? Anyway, at every sale there is a point when you should pack it up and go get lunch. Instead people become kooky with yard sale vibes by projecting their boredom onto the customers. In this case getting upset when someone won’t take a free pen.

An interesting day, not the most fruitful, but interesting.

Saturday we had two guest stars: Karl (who almost doesn’t count at this point) and my little sister Lily who was visiting from Berkeley. There didn’t seem to be anything starting at 8:00, so we met up at 8:30 and headed out. The first few sales we hit were pretty unremarkable, except that we could not seem to get off the same sale route as this woman who we’ve seen around before. Every sale we hit, she was there. I feel like I need to also add that she was wearing an amazing amount of blush. Anyway, other than that the only notable incident was one of the sellers saying sincerely as we left, “Thank you for shopping at my home.”

We hit one sale that seemed to have a lot of stuff. I was amused by some of the stuff, like a t-shirt that said “I have a black belt in keeping it real,” but didn’t find anything I actually wanted to own. Karl bought some CDs and as we drove away, he told us the seller was a well-known local radio DJ (who none of the rest of us had recognized). No big deal, except the guy was selling promo CDs — technically a big no-no! We were all pretty surprised by that.

Nearby was a sale that wasn’t supposed to start until 10. They didn’t quite have all their stuff out yet, but were pretty much open for business.

I had been fascinated by the ad for this sale, which read in part: “We are young, cool and hip and are selling all of our young, cool, hip material possessions. We are gypsies and pirates, pin-up girls and fairies. All of our clothes suggest as much. You will want them when you see them.”

There were no pin-up girls or pirates in sight, but the guy could maybe pass for gypsy-ish. And as for fairies?

She was cool about letting us take a picture of her wings (which she had made — pretty sure they weren’t being sold). I attempted to get my sister to buy a t-shirt with a big pot leaf on it and said in Spanish, “Don’t drink and drive, smoke and fly!” but she somehow managed to resist.

After a few more boring sales we made our usual coffee and pastry stop. Across the street from the cafe was this sign.

Meghan and Karl went in and reported back that no cool stuff was actually encountered.

It was shortly after this that we headed to an estate sale. Its ad had seemed heavy on the tools and “guy stuff,” which isn’t usually our thing, but we thought we’d check it out. Now, many of the streets in our neighborhood are really only wide enough for one car. Most people manage to figure out what to do if there are two cars driving at once: one of them moves over and lets the other one pass. Well, we turned down the street and there was a guy just sitting in the middle of the street. We pulled over so he could drive past us, but he just sat there. Meghan was waving at him to move forward, yelling “Come ON!!!” even though there’s no way he could have heard. We couldn’t tell what his problem was. Eventually he just pulled his car over and parked it near where he had been idling. She was ready to kill. And after all that, there was a line to get in the sale.

There was a yard sale across the street so we checked that out for a minute. This was about the best thing there.

We headed back up the street to our car, and who starts coming along in his car? The bad driving guy! Meghan did something I am still laughing about: she walked into the street and strolled ahead of the guy, just taking her time. I joined her once I realized what was going on. The guy yelled something about how we should use the sidewalk and we both screamed “LEARN TO DRIVE!!!” I’m not sure he even knew why we were messing with him, but we felt slightly vindicated.

Time to move to a different neighborhood. At one sale, we found a bunch of still sealed wedding music CDs — like for DJs to have sappy songs at the ready. They had titles based on what the songs were recommended for: Bride and Groom’s First Dance, Father and Bride, and so on. I looked at the Mother and Groom one and was shocked to find Guns ‘N Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” This seemed truly demented. We all tried to envision what a groom dancing with his mom to that song would look like. I would be so happy if I saw that at a wedding.

Next we hit a sale where a huge inflatable snowman was flopping around in the yard.

The sellers seemed pretty friendly, and they had some, um … interesting items.

I bet someone snagged that, but I’m guessing these videotapes were still there at the end of the day.

I found a packet of really cheesy religious stickers and joked to my sister that I should buy them and stick them on Karl. “You should!” she said. They were a quarter, so I figured it was worth it just for the laugh. I managed to stick a “Hooked on Jesus!” sticker on Karl’s arm without him noticing, but I was cracking up so bad I almost couldn’t stand it. I probably didn’t make it two minutes before I had to point it out to him. Meghan gave me a hard time about how I should have just waited it out. In theory I agreed, but I just couldn’t do it.

Next we went to a sale being held at a vintage costume store. They had racks of clothes spread out in the yard.

There was some great stuff there! But sadly, almost all of it had major condition issues. I guess that’s why they were parting with some of these items.

There were also some boxes of miscellaneous fun crapola.

Meghan picked up a cool vintage planter, some lucite pumps, and a couple of trashed dresses that were cheap and possibly salvageable.

I had noticed that the horrible deck sale (home of the bucket of undergarments) from a couple weeks back was happening again and made sure not to put that one on our list. Unfortunately though I didn’t recognize another repeat address and we ended up back at the freak sale from a few weeks before that — the place we encountered the boxes of porn mags and the woman with the lotion smeared on her face and shirt pulled up over her hair. She looked downright normal this time, but the sale was just as bad. Scads of horrible CDs, and some things we remembered seeing before, like this freaky-eyed doll.

And they still had plenty of questionable magazines.

Much as I would have loved to read “Unbelievable Tattoos — On A Woman” we left without buying anything.

It was getting to be time to call it a day so we headed back towards home, but hit a few more sales on the way. At one of them we encountered one of the oddest items I’ve seen at a sale … at least in recent memory.

Don’t strain your eyes trying to read that — here’s a close-up.

Shockingly, someone was choosing to part with this item. They were also parting with this bacon container, which cracked me up — especially the label claiming it “prevents food interaction.” Because I’m always concerned about what my groceries might be getting up to in the fridge when I’m not looking.

We thought this was a sale, then realized it was just a pile of free stuff. Although I suspect these people are soon going to have to face the fact that there’s a trip to the dump in their future.

The last sale we went to was a big one. As I was looking around, Meghan came up and said, “There’s a sign over behind that tree that is really, seriously messed up.” I figured I’d check it out when I was done browsing around. I took my time, and eventually sauntered over to where she had pointed … only to find possibly the greatest sign we have ever seen at a sale.

This made me laugh so hard that I was literally crying and couldn’t talk for a minute or so. I have no idea how that sign ended up saying “Yard Sard,” but I am sure glad it did.

All in all, it was a downright hilarious day. Lily picked up a few items; Meghan and Karl did most of the trunk filling. I hardly bought anything all day, but I laughed more than I had in a long time!