Mantovani and the Eggplant

Free-for-all on Avenue of the Fleas

Garage sale lines never fail to amuse me. The fact some junk collectors are so desperate to purchase a stranger’s overpriced castoffs that they form an iPhone- release-in-China-grade queue simply boggles my mind. Not only does such occupation require considerable energy cross-referencing Craigslist and Google Maps, but it means forsaking the precious weekend sleep-in. No, no one in their right mind would subject themself to such a waste of time. Accordingly, I ponder what I consider to be one of life’s greatest mysteries: Why the heck am I waiting among all these lunatics?

Having lived near Palm Beach, land of the rich and celluloid, I’ve seen my fair share of garage sale lines. Typically, they’re reserved for estate sales, those sad occasions when some little old socialite departs for that Saks Fifth Avenue in the sky and leaves behind a trust fund for her pocket pooch and a collection of gaudy brooches and glassy-eyed mink stoles for paying commoners.

I’ll never forget one Palm Beach estate sale I attended on Seabreeze (or Seaspray or Seaview) Avenue because the commoners venturing to “The Island” from the west side of the Intracoastal –where “normal,” middle class people live – actually stormed the gate and sprinted toward the Italian luxury linens and cockeyed Tiffany lamps. I couldn’t stop laughing; everyone knows it’s more dignified to speed walk.

Lines create a sense of anxiety and urgency by emphasizing the reality of a limited supply of something (however questionably) desirable; each person positioned in front of the seasoned estate sale plunderer serves as a physical representation of the ever-increasing possibility the good stuff – chipped teapots, wobbly, moth-infested arm chairs, Mantovani Christmas Carol LP’s -- will expire before they’ve had a chance to paw through them. And that’s precisely how those early bird bastards made me feel Saturday upon my arrival at 820 Alameda de Pulgas in Belmont.

The sudden removal of the Craigslist ad should have served as my first clue something was amiss; one minute my bookmarked link worked, and the next, it did not. But I recalled the pretentious road name (Google Translate tells me the Spanish translates to “Avenue of Fleas?!”) and there was no mistaking the address when I neared it: A restless mob had assembled at the end of the driveway, and several mob members were pacing in front of two folding tables serving as a barricade to block their way. By luck, I scored a parking spot directly across the street from the mayhem. I crossed the Avenue of Fleas and joined the hornet’s swarm to assess the competition.

"Neckbrace" and "Eggplant"

Naturally, the six-foot-tall woman in size “gargantuan” purple jeans caught my attention. She was shaped like an eggplant, rounded purple posterior to boot. And then there was the middle-aged Asian man in the neck brace. And the bearded hipster in the tweed hat; he could very well be my rival for any classic rock vinyl. But was there any vinyl to be had? Beyond the Eggplant, I spied rows of tables covered in extinct technology, tchotchkes and individually priced silverware. The records, if any existed, were probably in the open garage.

Realizing I would likely have to battle, mano-a-mano, with the cretins around me, I naturally grew huffy and sought solidarity from one of them. I turned to the woman beside me. She was slight but sprightly; perhaps she could run interference for me as I sprinted for the garage.

“So, what happened to the Craigslist ad?” I asked, careful to direct my eyes skyward so as not to betray interest in any particular sale item.

“I know! It disappeared,” she said. Friendly but useless.

Perhaps the organizers saw this crowd and figured they had garnered enough attention already, I thought.

“Sign the list!” said another woman, the one sporting a black puff vest atop a matching pajama set. She wore her hair tied into a loose bun atop her head, a style I typically associate with ballerinas and grandmothers. Pajama Gram shoved a clipboard into my hands.

This was new. List? List for what? Exactly what brand of junk had they got in there?! And, most importantly, how could I have wasted an entire minute allowing stragglers to sign it before me?

“They’re only taking 10 people at a time,” Pajama Gram explained.

Not willing to divulge my full identity, I scribbled “Megan W.” in the No. 17 slot.  I returned the clipboard to the bouncer, a 60-ish man in a Giants ball cap. He seemed more like a helpful neighbor than the typical, hard-nosed estate liquidator.

“Did someone die?” I asked.

“No, the owner’s just really old, and she’s unloading some of her stuff,” he said. “This will probably be the first of several sales.”

None of the people arranging wares on the tables appeared “really old,” and I wondered if a wizened face might suddenly peer from one of the green shuttered windows above to mourn the loss of the innumerable treasures below.

“Why are there so many people here, waiting?”

But it was 9 a.m. and time for the Bouncer to begin consulting his list.

“Steve? Nancy? George?”

The Bouncer ticked the names off as, one by one, their owners pushed between the two folding tables. I gathered Eggplant was actually Nancy, as she was second to squeeze through the gap. Once clear, she by-passed Steve and began to gallop for the jewelry display cases.

“Run! Run!” I shouted after her, perturbed into catcalls by her head start.

The Bouncer had read off 10 names, but somehow 11 bodies had slipped past him. The add-on was Neckbrace, and he was making a beeline for the box of gilded frames near the garage.

“Wait!” the Bouncer shouted. “You have to wait your turn!”

But there was no stopping Neckbrace; he moved with surprising speed for someone with an immobilized head. Realizing his list contained but 18 names anyway, the Bouncer declined to give chase and instead stepped aside to let the rest of us funnel through.

Over at the jewelry display cases, Eggplant was stuffing her mitts with bejeweled trinkets, anxiety visibly building on the face of the table attendant with each addition.

“Stop,” the attendant said. “That’s too many. We can’t keep track.”

Hoarding the old lady’s beads and baubles? For shame, Eggplant. For Shame.

Meanwhile, Neckbrace was shoveling 35mm camera equipment into a shopping bag. Another attendant rushed to his side.

“You need to pay for that stuff before you put it in a bag!” she said.

The goods

I waded through the chaos to the garage and the vinyl collection inside.  As I entered, a middle-aged Asian woman was exiting, a miniature wood sled firmly clasped in her hands.

“Look at this, George!” she said.

Both George and I appraised her find and neither of us was impressed. The cheap woodwork made the sled look more like a stage prop than an authentic, vintage three-quarters-sized replica of a vintage toy. I turned my attention back to the records and began pawing through a sea of Mantovani. Man, how I’m sick of seeing that penguin suit-clad smug mug.

The mother of all garage sale events?!

Yesterday, en route to release a recovered PHS Mourning Dove in San Carlos (amusingly, the bird actually came with a specific house address, where my avian taxi dropped her off), I happened to drive by a banner advertising what must be The Mother of all Garage Sale Events: the entire town of San Carlos is banning together to peddle secondhand junk! Feast your eyes on the beautiful map above.

The event takes place Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, visit the San Carlos Together community website. I’ll be there with my friend, Kelsey. Meanwhile, our bozo husbands will be hiking 25 miles to complete the Skyline to Sea hike from Big Basin Park to Waddell Beach. They expect it will take them about 12 hours. By that time, we just might be done bargain hunting.

From the archives: [Junk] collecting in Gainesville, Fla.

Note: The following was written for Professor John Marvel’s Spring 2006 in-depth reporting class at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications.

Diane & Michael Buchanan

I expected 7 a.m. to look different.

For one thing, it was too light outside.

As a longtime advocate of the weekend “sleep-in,” I hadn’t witnessed too many early Saturday mornings, and I guess I half-expected an all-encompassing darkness that would lend a sense of mystery and importance to my mission.

A car horn sounded: They had arrived.

I finished buttoning my shirt, grabbed my wallet and half-stepped into my sneakers, pressing down on the backs with my hovering heels. I shuffled out the door and toward the driveway where my mom was holding open the gate. We climbed into the backseat of the purring Lincoln Navigator and it rolled in reverse.

It was my first garage sale experience and friends Michael and Diane had offered to show me the ropes. As residents of Gainesville for more than 20 years and garage sale patrons by instinct, they were the perfect tour guides: driven, determined, well-prepared.

From her position in the passenger seat, Diane turned around and pressed a hot cup of coffee into my mom’s grateful hands. The bottle of juice and folded newspaper located on the console were for my use. Between sips of cranberry juice cocktail, I glanced over the likely targets.

My first mistake was suggesting the estate sale on page 3.

“Translation for an estate sale is ‘expensive [junk],’” Michael said as he turned the SUV down 16th Avenue.

“Some people just say ‘estate sale’ because they’re selling their old grandma’s stuff,” Mom offered. (She really was just along for the ride.)

Michael explained how middlemen often jack-up the price of merchandise at estate sales so they can make a profit. His disgust was palpable.

And simply relying on the classifieds was a no-no too.

“If people are running an ad in the paper, it usually means they think their [junk] is more special than everybody’s else’s,” Diane said. The newspaper provided a rough guide, but it was only consulted when the neon-colored cardboard signs ran out. In any event, it seemed Michael and Diane had already scoped out a target: The Duckpond.

Located in the northeast section of Gainesville, the Duckpond neighborhood hovers between downtown and the no-man’s land of the east. The area earned its name from a narrow strip of water between West and East Boulevards, a favorite hangout for waterfowl. They seemed oblivious to the splendid architecture surrounding their murky existence – the towering Victorians, sturdy rock Colonials and old Florida homes with inviting porches are all historic remnants of the 19th and early 20th century. And as the real estate is generally upper class, so was the discarded junk.

“Diane’s got this snobby attitude: She won’t shop in some parts of town,” Michael confided as we headed east on Eighth Avenue toward the Thomas Center.

But the Duckpond seemed bereft of signs that Saturday morning, and as it was nearing 8 o’clock, the pressure of uncovering that first sale weighed heavily upon Michael. In Florida, most garage sales begin at 7 a.m., and if you want to get the good stuff, you need to arrive early; As a general rule, Michael and Diane didn’t shop past 10 a.m.

Michael, perhaps in desperation, began tailing a blue Volvo. It was moving much like the Navigator, cruising at a slow speed and periodically breaking with each yard sign it passed. Our convoy passed a cardboard square with magic marker arrows promising a sale up the road, but after a mile, Michael dismissed it as a decoy.

“I’ll tell you something that’s unforgivable: leaving your signs up –“

 “Yes, that’s unforgivable,” Diane interjected.

“— leaving your signs up until the next weekend,” Michael finished.

The Volvo sensed the decoy too and turned north. We followed.

At the north end of the neighborhood, we came across our first real sale of the day.

Like a shining oasis in a desert of sleeping homes, the two rows of used furniture along that driveway served as a promising beacon. But we certainly weren’t the first to sip from the watering hole; As we pulled up to the single-story home, a station wagon loaded to the brim with odds and ends pulled away from the curb.

“Look at this guy,” Diane said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“The man is probably a professional shopper and has certain items he searches for,” Michael said.

But Diane’s attention was soon diverted.

“Ooooooh, I want that little table,” she said, pointing at a cute wood piece with narrow legs. “Let me out! Let me out!” Our vehicle was still coasting to a stop when she leapt from the running boards.

Yet the man in the Volvo was two strides ahead of her. By the time Diane reached the driveway, he had hoisted up the table by a leg and was carrying it toward the young woman seated casually with her back to the garage door. It was gone.

As Michael bent down to inspect a box of colorful plates, Diane and my mom busied themselves by surveying the other furniture, including a set of side tables and a matching coffee table, each priced about $20. The seller said her husband had purchased the tables — against her wishes — from another garage sale less than a month ago. Ah, the circle of [junk].

In the end, Michael and my mom decided to split the plates and a box of coffee mugs amongst themselves. Michael planned to use his half for mosaic art projects. My mom would employ hers as a bargaining chip to reclaim the expensive set she had loaned to me. They paid for the dishes, and we jumped back into the Navigator.

“I wanted that table,” Diane moaned.

“You just gotta grab it, and if someone else is grabbing it, you just pull harder,” Michael said as we glided over a speed bump. My new dishwasher-safe dining set clattered in the trunk.

It was during our drive to the second stop of the day that I received the lowdown on “shabby chic.” According to Michael and Diane, the term refers to dated novelty items that still retain an aura of “coolness.” (Apparently, “shappy chic” is a garage saler’s “rosebud.”)

Just west of Main Street on Eighth Avenue, we came across a benefit sale for the restoration of a historic building. Area families had donated the wares and arranged the collection on folding tables within a fenced dirt lot. We parked.

“This would not be my neighborhood of choice,” Diane said.

“Yeah, but you get great stolen stuff,” Michael joked.

But after appraising the booty, I had trouble believing we were dealing with stolen goods; It was unlikely anyone would go to the trouble of stealing and then attempting to sell Vicki Carr’s “It Must Be Him” album on vinyl or a knock-off Louis Vuitton purse.

Empty handed, I trotted back to the car where the others were waiting for me; I had come to realize retreating to the Navigator was the official signal for Michael and Diane’s dissatisfaction with a sale or the completion of their shopping. I jumped into the backseat and we were off.

“They didn’t even have stickers on their stuff,” Diane said. “That means it’s too expensive.”

We paused briefly for three more “decoys” before locating our next stop. The first was a “Lot for Sale” sign and the second a plea for the return of a lost house key. An older man was in the process of affixing the third, an orientation sign to his sale, to the pole of a stop sign.

“Just look at this guy,” Michael said. “I can tell this isn’t going to be a good one,” “He isn’t suave, shappy or chic.”

And he obviously wasn’t ready for us. We turned onto Northwest Fifth Avenue and found someone who was.

The owners of a white, concrete blockhouse had littered their front yard with a baby stroller, a cat carrier and a ferret cage. A row of clothes on hangers swung from a low tree branch. The offerings didn’t look promising, but we filed out of the car anyway.

By the time Michael uncovered a pair of used panties near the makeshift clothesline, he was ready to go.

“Now that was an experience,” he said. “Some people just out garbage out on their yards and call it a garage sale.”

“We always run into one or two of those,” Diane said.

By then, it was getting late – 9 a.m. to be exact – and Michael steered the Navigator toward 43rd Street.

Just off the busy road, a group of Santa Fe Community College students and faculty members were conducting a combined sale to raise money for a trip to a radiography conference in Orlando. The goods were plentiful: a stack of bikes with rusty chains, a fake poinsettia plant, a typewriter, a weedwacker, rolls of wallpaper and a bird cage, sans bird. A dancing teddy bear sang Elvis tunes when his hand was squeezed.

Michael presented me with “The Official Italian Joke Book.”

“You can’t get that just anywhere,” he said.

Also among the “limited edition” items was a pair of nunchucks priced at $3 and a set of bullhorns fastened to a leather display board.

“We’re betting the yogurt maker won’t sell,” said Robin, one of the faculty members.

“Who’s going to buy a yogurt maker?”

Well, it was additive free.

But Michael was headed for the car and the rest of us trotted behind him.

In a bordering neighborhood, we came across Fili, a woman purging items before she moved to a new home located off 34th Street. She worked a craft booth at the Waldo Flea Market and among her sale items was an assortment of thread spools, most of which were bright pink.

“People come out, and that’s the color they like,” she said. She wore a fanny pack fastened around her hips – presumably the sale cash “box” — and a University of Florida Gators T-shirt.

As Fili sold a plant to a skinny youth with a handlebar mustache, I sorted through the video collection, including a VHS tape of the 1993 Bill Clinton Presidential Inauguration.

The lady beside me, a middle-aged woman named Brenda, was searching for crafts.

“I’ve probably been shopping at garage sales since I was 15,” she confided, clutching a spool of brown thread. “I never go to the mall.”

Brenda is what many garage sale patrons call a “free-styler.” She scorns the newspaper advertisements, opting instead to drive aimlessly around town and stop wherever she pleases. Other garage salers will plan a route of attack. They scan the Friday and Saturday newspaper classifieds and then map out the order in which they shop. Within this second classification is a subclass of  “professionals,” a few devoted individuals who rise at the crack of dawn every Saturday so they can beat the crowds. Often they arrive at sales even before the hosts open shop. At such times, they’re referred to as “Early Birds,” a distasteful distinction in most garage sale social circles.

John Maxwell, resident of a house off Northwest 35th Way, was not a fan of Early Birds. In fact, he maintained a careful tally of how many flocked to his garage sales before the advertised time. At the time of our arrival, there were nine new pencil marks on Maxwell’s garage door. The first was recorded at 6:47 a.m.

“I’m an accountant – I just do it by habit,” Maxwell explained, tucking his pencil into his left breast pocket.

Maxwell, a retired U.S. Military captain, said he averages about one garage sale every six to nine months; He has to in order to keep up with all the knickknacks his daughter-in-law sends him from Colorado. From the collection of display, I gathered she likes items with a western motif.

“We get it, and we get rid of it,” Maxwell said. “But she’s becoming aware of that after being married to my son for awhile.”

Empty-handed, Michael, Diane and my mom had retreated to the Navigator, and I soon joined them. It was nearing 10 o’clock, and we had one more stop to make.

At a house along 16th Avenue, we came across a mother forcing her daughter do the unthinkable: sell her beloved stuffed animals.

“I made her weed them down,” explained LuAnn Carter.

 “Fine, but you have to take me to Build-A-Bear,” said Katie, 10.

 “I don’t have to do anything – maybe if you got straight A’s…”

This delightful family was attempting to scale back before moving, and a laundry basket piled high with toys was part of the sacrifice.

“I was going to buy one and tell her, ‘I’m going to give this to my dog,’” Michael joked when we were back in the car. “Actually, she was asking 50 cents – I was going to try to talk her down to a quarter.”

The Navigator turned east on 16th Avenue to return to my stop, my house. Michael, Diane and Mom were headed for breakfast. I was headed for bed.

Winslow’s Dictionary of Universally Accepted Garage Sale Terminology

I can spot baby crap from a mile away.

I owe this remarkable superpower to my friends, Michael and Diane, although, outside of mixed company, we tend to refer to such secondhand sale offerings as “baby sh*%.” If colleges offered a PhD in “Garage Sale Sciences,” Michael and Diane would undoubtedly score honorary degrees. They’re that good.

When I was in college, Michael and Diane did me the great honor of allowing me to tag along on one of their epic Saturday scrounges, and I wrote an entire essay on the experience for my in-depth reporting class (I earned an “A”). I recently uncovered the original essay, but here’s a rundown of what I learned and have since adopted as “Winslow’s Dictionary of Universally Accepted Garage Sale Terminology:”

Antique (adjective): Reserved for items at least three decades old.

Baby Sh*% (noun): Kid-related junk the owner (usually the youngest child in the household) has outgrown and which is being peddled by overly optimistic parents desperately trying to make a few bucks so as to buy more kid-related crap.

Classifieds (noun): Once, a long time ago, printed publications known as “newspapers” existed. Sellers would pay exorbitant sums of money – generally more than they would eventually make at their forthcoming sale – to advertise in these publications.

Craigslist (proper noun): An online list from a guy named Craig through which sellers can advertise sales for free.

Drive-by (noun): The act of surveying the proffered goods from the safety of one’s vehicle before committing to grapple with parallel parking on an already crammed, one-way residential street.

Early Bird (noun): An inconsiderate jerk who either can’t read or doesn’t care to adhere to advertised sale hours and arrives five hours early on the off chance he might score a limited edition Perry Como Christmas Collection LP.

Estate Sale (noun): Overpriced, free-for-all sale of the entire contents of a home once the owner has kicked the bucket or been forcibly relocated to a nursing home. If organized by the deceased’s family, deals are possible. If organized by an Estate Sale Company (see entry for “Kofskis”), run the other way.

Freestyler (noun): One who dismisses sale advertisements and drives aimlessly around town, leaving a wake of near-accidents as he or she slams on the brakes upon detecting yet another handwritten, cardboard sign.

Garage Sale (noun): Moderately priced sale of random household crap assembled in a garage or carport.

Kofskis (proper noun): South Florida-based antique and estate sale company. Among the worst offenders when it comes to overpriced junk.

Rummage Sale (noun): When an entire community collectively compiles its crap and attempts to tempt buyers with round neon price stickers advertising “5, 10 and 25-cent” price points. Generally hosted in a church. Proceeds often fund charity projects or some youth group’s field trip to perform at the International Yodeling Competition in Fargo, North Dakota.

Shabby Chic (adjective): Used to describe a vintage item universally considered hideous when new but which has since acquired an aura of novelty and is thus desirable in modern times.

Yard Sale (noun): Low-priced sale of random household crap piled atop old comforters strewn across a front yard. NOTE: In South Florida or Seattle, not recommended during the rainy season (namely, 11 months of the calendar year)

Sellers and buyers alike: Note these definitions. Write them down or commit them to memory. Mislabeling one’s sale is a near-capital offense and will be punished accordingly.

The absolute worst offender of mislabeling is the overzealous housewife who advertises her Baby Sh*%-grade offerings as an “Estate Sale.” That is wrong on so many levels. First of all, she is diverting traffic from real estate sales, the ones in which someone has actually died and buyers like me get to creep around the vacant house rifling through filament light bulb collections and shelves of Betamax cassettes. Second, she’s responsible – during this heightened period of Super-Intense, Radioactive Global Warming, no less — for the squandering of immeasurable amounts of gasoline as we buyers conduct repeated drive-bys to determine whether her rinky dink starter home is truly the estate in question. How dare she. A patchwork quilt piled high with a kid’s stained onesies is not an estate sale.