Years from now when everything returns to normal and we forget about how some banks destroyed the economy, I hope somebody puts together a book anthologizing all the stupid fucking newspaper articles about How Hot Thrift Shopping Is During The Great Recession. It would be a great historical reference and an incredibly boring book, essentially featuring only a single article — albeit a single article rewritten a hundred different times in a hundred different ways by a hundred different intrepid reporters, each of whom used the skills they honed during J-School to discover that People Have Continued To Buy Things Even During A Depression (or “D-Process,” which is a less scary D word, but a more scary D… process).
“People have even continued to buy some of the same things, the same designer labels,” that article reads, “but they’re buying them at a totally different place: not in the Department Store, but in the Thrift Store.” Yes, it turns out that the new conventional wisdom that the old conventional wisdom was wrong was… wrong! “And if you’re skeptical, check out these interviews with one, two, three, four, maybe even five people found shopping at thrift stores who don’t look like rag-pickers!”
This is the kernel of the article; besides that the reporter mixes and matches a series of commonplaces, like lifestyle section Mad Libs. They choose from among the following:
a) After piquing your interest in Thrift Shopping, the reporter imagines that you may not be savvy enough to figure out how to buy things there — which is actually a very perverse thing to imagine, given that consumption has become the primary expression of a person’s taste, individuality, and political agency — which is why we can stop climate change or whatever else most effectively by “buyin’ different stuff!” So then, s/he
- gives you a list of instructions, tips, or “strategies” (yes, they call them strategies) for buying things at a Thrift Store, including such good advice as “look for well-made items!” and “compare and contrast different Thrift Stores that might have different things for sale!” and “envision how much money you are saving by speculating about the actual MSRP of the item you’re getting secondhand!” and “make sure whatever you buy isn’t actually ruined in some indiscernable way!” and “leave your gross-out sense at home!” That last one is an actual quote from “Where Cut Rate Meets Couture,” an article that appeared in the Sacramento Bee on February 27, 2009.
(nota bene: some of this is actually good advice! Just don’t think about how Real Wages have, on average, declined since 1964, because that’s a great way to sour any shopping trip!)
and/or
- gives you a list of local Thrift Stores that you can actually go to! This is good because every local newspaper will have a different list. The addresses and phone numbers will be different.
b) Perhaps they’d like to embellish the lede? If so they begin with an anecdote concerning either
- a list of people unexpectedly seen shopping at a Thrift Store. If it’s New York (and they’re writing for the Times), these are celebrities and they offer quotes about how “Vintage is so hot right now, especially after the TARP!” Any other town and it’s likely not a celebrity, but a Normal Person Looking to Cut Back On Expenses Ever Since Her/His Job at the Mill Was Creatively Destroyed and the Bank That Once Owned One Tranche of Her/His Alt-A Mortgage Wouldn’t Go For A Short Sale. That person likely also offers a quote about how “Vintage is so hot right now, especially after the TALF.”
and/or
- a list of items unexpectedly found at the thrift store. Designer labels are good, references to Low Low Prices are de rigueur: “One Saturday afternoon, Kelly Innes took five Ralph Lauren shirts to the store’s cash register! And then he handed the clerk a ten dollar bill! And then he got back some change!”
c) File the story; wonder why newspapers are dying.
So now’s the time to tell you that a new Salvation Army store has opened in Champaign, at 109C West John Street, in the space previously occupied by Wild Country. It’s a pretty great store, with a small but decent selection of clothing, toys and games, housewares, and furniture. It’s got much less stuff — and in particular, less furniture — than the other Salvation Army way north on Neil Street, but this makes browsing much easier. The staff was very pleasant and we found some Wonderful, Cool Vintage Stuff, such as:
this crimson wool pullover and 1980s middle-manager looking tie, and
this scarf, purple wool cap, and a German-made Kodak camera (with 11 undeveloped pictures on the film left inside!)
All in all, it was a pretty great shopping experience that I very sincerely recommend, especially In This Economy!
Then Joel asked me to write about the store for Smile Politely and I made the mistake of doing research to prepare by searching ProQuest National Newspaper Premier for “thrift store” to see any articles that have appeared on the subject over the last year. There were over a hundred, many of which seem to have used some implicit form of the template above. Someone should collect them all in a book to record for all posterity the fact that even as U6 (a broad measure of the unemployment rate) hit 17%, reporters never wavered in their determination to Speak Truth To Power… and to fill up pages in the lifestyle section, however they could.
The new Salvation Army store is at 109C West John Street, in Champaign, in the space last occupied by Wild Country. And you can have that anthology idea.