11/26/2008 - DAV Mendenhall

DAV Mendenhall. November 13, 2008. my traveling companion will and i pause with trepidation before entering this most hallowed of thrifting holes. i think even at this early point we could tell we were in for a...



MIND BENDER!!!!!!!

okay, so it wasn't that intense of an experience, i just thought that record cover was funny and i couldn't think of anything else to say to start this week's entry off. my friend will and i went to the dav on mendenhall and thrift town on winchester this outing, and i'll be breaking it up into two chunks for easier digestion:

bitter/books - may cause cramps, bloating, or gas. use only as directed.



it was a pretty usual visit to the good old disabled american veterans store, replete with hilarious records, like this "musical salute to the statue of liberty" (do you really think she cares? i don't) aaaaaand



who could forget liberace? unfortunately, not me. you know for all the chuckles i've gotten out of liberace over the years (many, to be sure) i never really stopped to wonder what kind of music he actually played. turns out his repertoire included the themes from the movies "on golden pond," "dragon-slayer(?)" and "raiders of the lost ark," along with apparently the usual smattering of showtunes. sounds like a hoot.



also typical for the dav - extremely interesting, extremely overpriced books. this awesome looking coffee table book on rembrandt was like ten bucks or something, and of course i was there the day before their "first and third thursday" storewide half off sale, so there was no way i was buying it, even though i couldn't come back the next day. i really have to remember to only go on thursdays from now on. i bet it's mobbed, but it's still worth it.



two volume encyclopedia - in case you're curious:

"zy⋅mur⋅gy –noun
the branch of applied chemistry dealing with fermentation, as in winemaking, brewing, the preparation of yeast, etc."

i had no idea.



longtime readers of the blog (if there are any) might remember an early idea i had for an "other people's vacations" party where everyone sits up and looks at secondhand slides of other people's trips around the world, seeing as they're pretty widely available at thrift stores if you look hard enough, but i had no clue as to whether or not it were really possible, taking into account all the different sizes of slides, slide carousels, slide projectors, etc etc etc this is really boring. anyway turns out it's not so simple, that each brand of projector usually only has a handful of compatible carousels, which usually only have a few types of compatible slides, and on and on. not saying it's impossible (and i still think the idea of sitting up drinking looking through other people's old vacation photos is insanely hilarious) just that it might take some work. anyone still interested? anyone still reading, for that matter?



weird little collection of mostly broken baseball bats, all overpriced. i think there must be one person who works at this place one day a week who just has wildly unrealistic ideas about how much people should be paying for a mostly unraveled half-size aluminum baseball bat, and just goes around pricing as much stuff as they can in an eight hour shift, leaving a trail of crap in their wake. i have really been excited about the idea of getting a baseball bat to just keep around the house lately though i cannot explain why.



ditto for the golf clubs, although not for keeping around the house. sadly overpriced too - that metal driver on the left side of the frame? 19.98. not kidding. i really do like this store a whole lot but i cannot for the life of me fathom who they think is going to pay 20 bucks for a used golf club. i realize they're a whole hell of a lot more expensive than that if you buy them new but come on. anyone who is even marginally interested in golf AND shopping at thrift stores is going to know they can get a much better deal than that at a lot of other places. i did however pitch will my idea about snagging a few cheap clubs and a bag and heading out to overton park when the weather gets nice again and having a drunken freeform golf afternoon and he didn't seem completely uninterested which was encouraging. if it ever comes together i will be sure to document it on my other blog, as hilarity will almost certainly ensue.



they did have some more badass, reasonably priced board games though - definitely a strength of this store. this one, "TOUCH," claims to be the "game of palmistry" although from what i could tell it just had some charts and lists and stuff and you read each other's palms, noncompetitively. i didn't really dig too deeply into it, although the cards are huge and cool looking



neat, huh



they had, no shit, upwards of TEN dokken tapes (we counted) including this cassingle of the theme from the third nightmare on elm street (i was not aware that dokken had performed that). i just imagine some ungracefully aging hesher dude tearfully donating his whole collection of dokken tapes after being browbeaten by his mom to move out of her trailer for the umpteenth time...what a moment. also saw this sweet pigface tape with david yow on it that i really wish i had bought for my wife (she loves that shit)



this has to be a joke, right? wow it's not a joke. wow.

i kind of wish i had bought this damn thing now



usual hilarious assortment of carafes, thermoses and other liquid storage items, all pretty cheap. i think if i were ever going to turn into a crazy collector person i would probably buy this type of stuff. i do not know why



kind of a nice looking rug - this is the type of thing people never think to look for at thrift stores, myself included, but we should, we all should, fools that we are.



REALLY nice looking guy's dress shirt that actually gave me pause. i tried it on, it fit really well, it was two freaking bucks, and i thought for a moment to myself i thought "hmmm...." but then i put it back on the shelf, cursed my completely monochromatic fashion sense and moved on. if it's not black or white or grey, don't even waste your time looking at it, i told myself. damn



SPEAKING of golf, there were like half a dozen pretty much immaculate pairs of golf cleats here, which made me laugh and actually consider buying a pair until i stopped and looked at the price tag. guess how much. no, really, guess.

was that ten i hear? nope, more than that.

twenty? nope.

surely they can't be more than thirty, you say? wrong again

forty? higher.

fourty four bucks, is how much they were, a pair. that is just insane. i understand, again, they're a lot more expensive new and it's really specialized footwear for a sport that people with money usually favor but that's the whole idea. your average rich golf asshole isn't going to be trolling the disabled american veterans thrift store on a wednesday afternoon, looking for bargains. i could go on, at length, about how ridiculous this is, but i get the sense i might care a whole hell of a lot more about it then most of you do, so i'll just say it's silly and leave it at that.



SPEAKING of specialized footwear, anyone have any idea what these are? will figured it out pretty quickly, which i was muchly impressed by - i knew right away but that's because i'm a thrift store jedi (he said, arrogantly). anyway they're for like tai kwan do and kickboxing and stuff - if you look at the picture you can see there's no bottoms to them, they're just pads that fit over the tops of your feet and the backs of your ankles with elastic straps to keep them in place, for kicking people repeatedly in the leg and shin and ass without chewing your feet up too much. basically like boxing gloves for your lower extremities. pretty neat, huh? talk about stuff you never expect to see. i couldn't for the life of me think of a use for them. now if there had been two pairs maybe we could have bought them and sparred in the parking lot or something, but sadly no. anyway pretty hilarious.

and that's a wrap for part one of our outing. i'll get part two up as soon as i can although i might as well take this occasion to formally announce that i'm dropping the "updated weekly" part of the mission statement of this blog, effective immediately. i obviously don't have the time or energy any more to stay on the weekly schedule, and that shows no signs of abating any time in the near future, so it's just causing me needless anxiety trying to meet a "deadline" that i invented in the first place and that i suspect none of you really give quite so much of a shit about, anyway. so we're going with "updated when time and inebriation permits" until further notice - all the more reason to get all web 2.0 with it and follow this humble operation via RSS, google reader, or your blog reading apparatus of choice. i'll still be thrifting and taking pictures just as fast as my little legs (and shutter finger) can carry me, and writing about it as much as possible, it's just clearly not going to be every week.

anyway on that note i'll bid you all a fondue and wish you a happy turkey day unless you are a turkey in which case RUN FOR YOUR FUCKING LIFE MAN!

talk to you later

d