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How To Score At The Thrift Stores
By Stacey Richter
SO, YOU AGING hipsters in your Mennonite eyeglasses, you
impoverished college students with your cheese-caked toaster ovens--you
think you know all the nuances of rooting through piles of discarded
junk for groovy, grease-coated gems? Think again, customers. Al
Hoff, creator of the zine ThriftSCORE, has written a spirited
guide highlighting the suspense, glory and disappointment of the
dedicated bargain-hunter. Hoff seems sincerely obsessed with digging
through piles of paperbacks, shirts and dishware for pearls of
great price: A Saturday Night Fever polyester shirt! A
piece of Franciscan dishware! Sure, you can get this stuff full-price
at vintage and antique stores, but Hoff, plucky heroine of her
own shopping drama, conveys the sheer cathartic pleasure of stalking,
rooting and finally pouncing upon a set of genuine Star Wars
bed sheets--for 49 cents! Hoff's hints are occasionally obvious
(good lamps and good shades often need to be bought separately),
but her keen eye and deep love of junk reveal veins of gold in
what you thought was a disgusting pile of trash, like the special
sections devoted to dead fads--disco, Tiki parties, CB radios
and "Literals," '70s housewares that labeled the obvious:
Anyone for a bowl that says "bowl" on it? Hoff emphasizes
that a good thrift score needn't be collectible, rare or valuable
to anyone but the shopper, and argues against paying high prices
for other people's alluvium. Real essays on the history of selected
junk--such as the rise and fall of Big Eye paintings (those pathetic
little waifs)--give this book substance; but it is really Hoff's
buoyant spirit that makes Thrift Score a fun read, for
veteran and neophyte thrift-store shoppers. "What if somebody
died in those clothes?" anti-thrifters ask. "What
if somebody famous died in these clothes?" counters
Hoff.
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