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Showing posts from 2011

I Heart Shop-a-Holics

     "No one needs $800 shoes." This is an admonishment from those brainy friends every time I say how I picked up a pair of Guiseppe Zanotti shoes or Manolo Blahnik boots at the Goodwill and cackle about how I will sell them on eBay. This is wisdom, I suppose, in an era that touts egalitarian economics as a virtue and from academics, artists and philosophical ascetics who really do believe it's what's inside that counts. (As long as what's inside is what they deem acceptable...but more on that later.) Apostolic WalkFit      Fine. Technically, no one needs even $50.00--or $25.00--shoes--those Israelites certainly got around (though it took the power of the Almighty to keep their sandals from wearing out). I suppose history showed that the guys at Valley Forge came out okay with rags wrapped around their feet. So no one needs $800 shoes, just as no one needs a custom Bentley with a Vinotemp wine cabinet in the trunk or a $7,000 Hermes saddle (or a $55 Hermes

eBay--The End of Rarity?

Many bricks and mortar antique dealers have claimed that eBay has killed the quaint little antique store.     "Nothing's rare anymore," one laments. "People just type in what they want, they find it, they buy it."          Isn't that a good thing?      I mean, the thrill of the hunt, aside, wouldn't it be a good thing to have a choice about having to lurk around in your leaky building in a blighted neighborhood waiting for that one twisted soul who collects Precious Moments Santa Claus /John Deere figurines to stagger in and find yours that you squirreled away between the Holly Hobbie 1978 Christmas ornaments and the Playmobil nativity set? Oh, certainly, you can stay in your cluttered curiosity shop, if you wish--re-stacking your vintage Playboy magazines and dusting your lead-based glazed Fiesta Ware, if you must, but wouldn't it be better to make a sale? After all, with the knowledge that the unopened six pack of Billy Beer might go to an a

Easy Money, The Myth

My mom was an antiques dealer--sort of like those two guys on that reality show on the History Channel.   http://www.history.com/shows/american-pickers I can tell you from here that bike is not worth it.   http://www.inherited-values.com/2010/01/american-pickers/  Mom had a great eye for really good stuff--collectible china, antique lace, pop art, weird, collectible dolls and toys, jewelry, artisan rugs, coins, watches, marble, novelty piggy banks, antique slot and pachinko machines, wood Norwegian racing sailboats, vintage juke boxes, neon beer signs and other beer-related advertising, roll-top desks, oil portraits of strangers, native American craft, creepy, 19th century German children's books, taxidermied creatures, etc. I don't think my mother made that much money as an antiques dealer, though she would have made an awesome subject for a reality show. Over the course of my childhood, it became easier and easier for her to lavish time acquiring stuff and more and mo

Welcome to Goodwill--looking for anything in particular?

"Let me know if I can help you find anything!" This is a Goodwill store--how would I know what I'm looking for until I find it? But I couldn't resist. "Yes. I'm looking for a round pool table, about one foot high."  leopard skin pool table Andy Griffith Pool Table But all I got was the odd look of someone about to call CFS. That's the trouble with having an omniverous appreciation for novelty songs. But it was May. May is to Florida Goodwill shoppers as December is to Arctic Santarian Elves as October is to saffron crocus harvesters in La Mancha. The snowbirds have flown back North, after shedding the evidence of their obsessive shopping habits, the surviving children have culled through their dead parents' golf clubs, Spode china and Farragamo shoes, doing drive-by dumps on their way to the beach. The gleaners go into the field and make hay while the sun doth shine. I swore each time that I wouldn't buy something unless it was an absol

The Fickle Fiends of Fashion-Marc Jacobs

    So, I'm finding all this Marc Jacobs stuff at the Goodwill--and I'm buying it like it's going out of style. Which, maybe it is. Because I can't seem to sell it. It usually is impossibly small sizes, including child's size 6, so that's not helping, but I don't understand it: I read about Marc Jacobs brilliant designs. I have heard that people love Marc Jacobs. There are at least 10 people who are NOT models that can wear his strange, twink-ish cuts and severe lines and odd layering. I'm starting to think maybe Marc Jacobs really mostly loves himself. But , after all, let's face it: what's not to love? Oh, I love myself! I mean, you! I meant you! Look at them! I mean, him! He's so pretty! Okay, him, too! Now, can we get something to wear? Or is that not the point at all? Okay, so, maybe it's not the point.

Liz Claiborne--Mistress of the Un-Dead

Andy Warhol famous line, that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes has entered the common lexicon of cliches and I'd like to kill him for it. In the first place, it's because, it seemed at the time, he was being kind of snotty--implying that most people (besides him) were too silly to tell the difference between 15 minutes of fame and a career of being famous. But then, we also have Liz Claiborne, who's been famous for a lot longer than that and doesn't look like she's ever going to go away. Even though she's been dead for god-knows how many years.  I don't hold anything against her success personally--the first Fortune 500 company founded by a woman and all the other feminist landmark accolades. And it is nice I suppose that there was a designer out there who designed for the feminine figure--small waste, bigger hips and butts, than for the 12-year-old boy, model's size 0 body, although her clothes don't fit me personally, with my non-exis