I’ve gone to thrift stores regularly since I was a teenager. Back then it was mainly for clothes. I worked at a movie theater with recent art school grads and took cues from them re fashion. Kathy introduced me to a place called Dollar-A-Pound in Cambridge. You had to get there real early on a Saturday, then run in and fight it out with other bargain hunters digging through mountains of shirts, pants, jackets, and dresses. It was a thing to do as much as anything. For someone who felt out of place in the high school ecosystem, it was a chance to belong to a different way of life.
In art school and thereafter, I furnished my apartments with furniture, kitchenware, et al from The Ark, Village Thrift, Unique, and long-gone junk stores along Belmont Avenue and around Uptown and Rogers Park. I still have four Art Deco wooden chairs I got from a store piled to the ceiling with flotsam and jetsam in the fall of 1990. They show up in dozens of paintings and drawings.
I’ve worn dead men’s shoes for decades. One favorite pair of black wingtips got resoled three times from wear. The history embedded within these and other finds have always made them feel more valuable than something costing ten times more, fresh from the factory, in a regular store.
I’ve used thrift store frames almost exclusively over the past decade to display my work on paper. Since slashing prices to $200 for nearly anything I make, spending hundreds for some moldings and glass seems nonsensical. I assume that buyers who don’t like these frames can always find new ones for the money they saved on the purchase price.
Since starting at the bookstore a couple years ago, I’ve become more attuned the worth and value of used books. Working at Tangible has allowed me to let go of a personal library gathered over decades. Digging through boxes and boxes of donations has sharpened my eye for the unusual or anomalous. I can scan a couple dozen mysteries or romances in a second and know that Joe will pencil in between $3.50 and $4.20 on the first white interior page.
The paperbacks and hardcovers that don’t fit the pattern fairly scream out from these piles. I look for distinctive typography and unusual subject-matter. Generally, books that are over thirty years old. Spending my whole life looking has made my eyes automatically search out any break in a pattern.
A couple months ago on a visit to the Unique down the street, I went over to the book section. Typically I only look for frames and shoes here but between the bookstore and the eBay library sell-off, books are on my brain. I found four things worth taking a chance on. None cost over $3.99. Most closer to $2. I bought them, then sat at home looking up titles and ISBNs. I took pictures of the covers, a couple inside pages, author signatures on a couple, and detail shots of scuffs and scratches. I listed them for between $10 and $80.
One sold for over $20 within a day and the bug bit me. I got on the bike and hit four Village Thrifts, starting in Little Village, onto Brighton Park, Chicago Lawn, then back to Back of the Yards. My haul was nothing special by I was getting the lay of the land.
It’s not entirely a money-making scheme. It’s more like training for a job I may or may not end up taking. Or, maybe it’s like trolling for mushrooms. When I was little I used to love finding them even though I would never eat one.
Finding books and passing them on feels better than hoarding them for myself. I read all the time but keeping the objects, no matter how beautiful, is no longer a thing for me.
Anyhow, if you wanna see some more of what I’ve found, here’s the place.
I reviewed a play that could’ve been ripped from the front page.
