Adventures in Thriftlandia

It's really great having like-minded friends.  How many people like music festivals, camping, beer, thrifting, and pickles, as much as me?  My friends, that's who.  It's also nice having friends in the same line of work to talk about our jobs endlessly with; I refrain from talking about work too much with civilians because I'm sure it's boring as hell.  (Note: true and revealing personal account follows): one day I prefaced a story I was telling my ex about work with the comment, "The most interesting thing happened at work today."  Before I could continue he stated, deadpan, "I doubt it was at all interesting."  Sometimes, but not often enough, he was pretty darn funny.  I could completely sympathize with him.  ANYway, I spent my day off with Lydia and Wendy, thrifting (we were later joined by Kitty).  Is thrifting in the dictionary?  Let me check...hmm, not listed in any authoritative source but it's getting there, I predict it.  All right!  Focus!  Wendy took on the special role of map router-outer and navigator and planned out a full day of thrifting adventures in North Miami and Broward.

We started out at the Douglas Gardens Thrift Store on NW 27th Avenue.  As I pulled into the parking lot I had several thoughts rapidly flit through my head: Hmmm, not a window in the place...it's really big...are there three cop cars in the parking lot?...man, I'm glad I'm not here alone.  I parked by the cop cars (naturally) and we went inside.  I'm looking for furniture today...and dresses, of course, I'm ordinately attracted to dresses.  The place had some really good furniture finds and I decided that I need to borrow/bribe someone with a pick-up truck and come back to get a dresser...there is some solid ( real wood), sturdy, reasonably attractive in an pseudo/noveau antique-y way, furniture there.  Especially if you feel up to refinishing furniture.  The clothes sucked.  The place is clean, smells fine, has approachable staff, and has something or the other on sale most times.

We then went to the Douglas Gardens on Hallandale, which I didn't like as much.  Again, the clothes sucked.  The furniture was reasonably decent, but not as nice as the other location; there was a really nice futon for sale there.  Realizing the quality, appearance and price of the used furniture available, Wendy said she doesn't plan on buying new furniture ever again, and wished she had a big house to fill with thrift furniture finds.  I agreed, stating it works if you if like an eclectic look (I said eclectic and Kitty mistakenly heard it as neglected, which was much wittier than I could have been).  You can't go into these places hoping to closely match anything you may already have.  I have that simple, espresso-colored, furniture trend that's so prevalent nowadays doing in my living room, and not much of what we found goes with that.  Of course, not much doesn't mean nothing.  That's a bit of foreshadowing for you :)  The clothes thrift store is separated from the furniture thrift store by a sex shop; yes, the location is pretty seedy.

As we were heading to our next location we noticed a Goodwill, right down the road from Douglas Garden.  It is the biggest Goodwill I've ever seen.  Lydia said it looked like the Nordstrom of Goodwills.  No furniture - all clothes, books, and random bric-a-brac and tchotchkes - very clean, well lit and good smelling inside, though it may have been a good smelling PERSON I was noticing.  I didn't find anything but both Wendy and Lydia found some clothes.

By this time we were starving so we went to eat lunch at LaSpada's in Davie, based on the recommendation of the Paul and Young Ron Show (I get all of my news from them and from perezhilton.com, which creates a pretty skewed world vision).  Just a sub (excuse me, hoagie) place but, sometimes,  all you want is a sub.  I mean, a hoagie.  The trick to that place is that they slice the lunch meats fresh to order; it makes all the difference.  I ate the whole damned thing, which reminded Wendy that her dad had said about me, approvingly, "that girl eats".  That, I do.

We headed to Thriftarella's, our last stop, in Davie.  Tiny place but packed with well-edited selections at very good prices.  I finally had some luck here and found a West Elm-ish side table for $20 (color: Espresso!).  Kitty got a great Mid-century lamp and a vintage travel case, Lydia got a Gremlins book/album and some awesome drink glasses ("Name your Poison") and Wendy got a puzzle and some Christmas lights...I may have missed something.  This is a place worth returning to; the turnover is very fast and there are some terrific finds.  We kept whispering to each other, "I love this place, I LOVE this place" as we passed each other.  As if Ms. Thriftarella herself was going to raise prices under our noses due to our unseemly enthusiasm.  It's worth going there just to meet her (Christine), she is pretty awesome in many respects.  Now, all I need to do is find someone with a pick-up truck...