Slap Your Mammy Down / Slap Your Pappy Down Again
The Brooklyn Family Sticking Point happened upon a one-block-long "flea market" yesterday. (Here.) That phrase gets quotation marks because all this thing really amounted to was a series of personal stoop sales* strung together in a daisy chain of folding tables stacked with crap.
Alongside the obligatory picture frames, salt shakers, shot glasses, and copies of Life, people in my neighborhood will sell their moldy old shoes (without soles!) for a dollar. They'll sell their old socks ("gently worn!"), three for a dollar. Books with pages dangling out. Single gloves, missing their match. Umbrella handles. Prescription eyeglasses. "Leftover" Flintstones chewable multivitamins. All this junk-drawer detritus is hauled to the curb and tagged at 50 cents, or a buck or two. Because the people in my neighborhood will sit outside their $3 million brownstone homes** on a scalding day in June to make 50 cents from a "Golden Retrievers!" calendar. From 2002.
Mrs. Sticking Point was bored/depressed/freaked out after just 6 minutes, so she and baby H headed off in the direction of the neighborhood toy store. I hung back with the beagle, and looked for the guy on this block who'd be selling records and CDs.
When I approached his table, he told me, "Everything's a quarter now, because it's gettin' fuckin' hot, and I'm tired of standin' out here." He had a lot of cool stuff, and I walked away with a bag full of goodies for less that the cost of a slice and a Coke. The best gets were this Ruts double disc (.50), this 14-year old Ramones trib comp (.25), this Bomp records comp (.25), and this Devo VHS tape. I first saw it on USA's Night Flight program when I was about twelve years old, back in my family's pre-VCR days (when you had to pay attention to what you were watching). The version I got yesterday for a quarter is the 1979, even-longer-out-of-print edition in the enormous black Warner Home Video box. On the Amazon marketplace, it's being sold as a "collectible" for $270. (Or 1,080 times more than I paid.)
The live stuff, and the video clips for "Come Back Jonee" and "Secret Agent Man," are worth every penny.
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Listening: "Something That I Said" from Live and Loud by The Ruts.
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* Called "Garage Sales" in neighborhoods with, uh... garages.
** Please note that I do not own, nor live in, such a home. Wife, child, beagle, and I share a 1000 square-foot rental apartment. (With some mod cons!)
Man, do I hate garage sales/flea markets/street fairs! NYC has a roving street fair that, I'm positive, is around to sell bad mango on a stick treats AND fuck you in the ass if you have a life and need to get somewhere either east or west that particular afternoon. Well, maybe not the ass part.
I thought that EBay had made garage sales obsolete?
Posted by: DoctorJones | Tuesday, 07 June 2005 at 16:43
People on eBay overvalue their products.
"This is a brand new 2005 quarter. I'll start the bidding at 95 cents."
Posted by: Tommy Himself | Tuesday, 07 June 2005 at 17:29