Hooray for the flea market

So here’s jimbo’s sign and my pile of garbage

Jimbo got a new hat. Don’t fit too well.

What is collectable? Is it something that triggers a memory of a certain time and place?

Or is it more than that? Do you see this Time magazine branded telephone? It feels like somewhere in the 1980′s, huh? Should I keep it? Should I put a price sticker on it and set it out in the shop?

If you answer yes to selling it, what price then? 3 dollars? How many months would you let it sit on a shelf before you gave up and threw it away? Or would you expect it to sell the first week?

Who on earth is dumb enough to open a junk store and try to answer these questions with every bit of junk that comes along? The task feels overwhelming right now and I’d like to get drunk and sleep under the counter.

What a depressing load of crap. Heating vent elbows. Orange lens gel. A cracked hi hat. Who volunteered me to shepard these derelict misfits to a new home?

Imagine loading a truck at 9 o’clock Saturday night just to wake at 5 am Sunday and head to the flea market? Who would pay 45$ to suffer the humiliation? Only a junk man. One who can’t let it go in the garbage. Only a man with hope in his heart. One who believes in second chances, do overs, resurrection, a treasure fallen far from the chest.

There’s a woman a few booths down and her voice carries.

“They sell him at Sotheby’s, very collectable. I paid 500$. I’m not making any money on this.”

Some people out here know something. A thing or two about this and that. More than that even. There are Ming dynasty pottery experts and oil can aficionados in the coffee and donut line clutching scores from the generalist who hauled some boxes from a storage unit.

But this pile of galvanized articulated tin furnace pipe joints won’t be rushed out to the trunk of the car and locked away securely should someone actually pay a few bits for it. They hand over the few crumpled bills and immediately regret it.

“What’ll I do with all this stuff? Make a robot? Will the robot work?”

The shaved head middle aged Black guy next to me has a rap-patter he’s laying on passersby.

“It’s going cheap, who’s next? Razzle dazzle dazzle dazzle!”

He has the same worries the rest of the vendors- “Who’s gonna make a lot of money off me? Did I sell too cheap? Was that a famous name on that painting? How much did I lose?”

Every sale is a loss for the guy if he puts his mind to it. In the end those of out here stay out here because we can shrug our shoulders and say, “oh well. At least I’m not taking it home again.”

If that’s enough for you, if that’s how high you raise the bar at 530 Sunday morning, you too can be a junk man. Or woman. There’s not enough old woman out here, unshaven, mad eyes with flashlights in the predawn.

“i dont have no rock n roll,” he tells me. Christmas albums, Montovani, 101 Strings, the same lp’s you find leftover in every record bin.

Still, having people arrive with a car of goodies is fun. It’s been a stressful time for me at the shop.

Oggy wrote me some encouraging words:

I wish you success in your business. Are you renting booth space at Mixed Nuts? I went to an antique mall/flea market and realized there are more people who will pay to let you not sell their trinkets than there are people who will actually buy your trinkets. And then you are making money doing nothing.

Oggy makes a good point. I’d mentioned to him if I couldn’t make rent I was going to turn the place into a metal detecting shop for the beach combers since we’re only 15 blocks from the beach. He replied:

Treasure hunting is definitely an under-served market. I’d like to tape a documentary of a treasure hunter looking for specific treasure. If you hear of a fanatic who has some insane inclination then I’ll get my crew together. I’m wandering the midwest and looking for work. I’d like to save enough money to retire in Mexico. S.F. might be on the route but unless there is a job offer on the table then I can’t afford the gas to cross the mountains. Missouri was the site of many Indian/pioneer battles and now it is home to frozen custard and the widest asses in America wheeling themselves through Target buying slave products from Vietnam and Golden Corral buffet for more asian stye spare ribs. I do not know if this is progress. I am disillusioned with the disparity between false advertised white tooth America and the slobbering transvaginal mesh class action lawsuit country that we really live in. But that will not stop me from writing my homeless manifesto –
live boldly as the bold live forever

With that this wandering legend signed off. It’s friends like this that remind me it doesn’t matter if this shop fails. If the effort I put into it is insane, it will be fun. It’s not that the shop looks good, but that I’m putting all I have into it.

I’m bored all over. I can’t bring myself to type away one more time that I’ve been to the dump and the fog rolled through the neighborhood and the lady and I had a quarrel.

Let’s turn the other check and with our eyes looking in a new direction, who do we see?

Doug. Dr. Doogles. Pursuing an acting career simultaneous to a medical career where he puts the wheels back on miscarriages for unwed mothers.

How’s that for living? We met his mailman last week. The rocker. Doug sent along a band flyer the guy stuffed in among the utility bills.

That’s his mailman, both hands on a guitar. The young child to his left left looks much like Jason Boucher, a childhood friend, or a demon imp abducted from hell.

It feels foolish to write about my life anymore. I’m just a business man now. But Doug, he may keep my spirit alive. All of our spirits alive.

Tonite we have a waitress who has not yet completely learned English, and if she has she has not yet come to understand the custom of cheese or sandwiches.

Trying to order a Philly cheese steak with chicken, not steak, becomes an exercise in circular logic.

I’d like a chicken cheese steak, I say.

You wan’ cheesesteaks or chicken sandwich? She asks.

Philadelphia style cheesesteak but with chicken, I reply.

Sorry. Sorry. One cheesesteak, one chicken?

Can anyone out there tell me the proper way to order this sandwich? Is it a Philly cheesechicken?

Not Jimbo. He went to the Castro and got a homosexual to cut his hair and he paid $50 dollars. Looks like he’s rich. While he’s buying salon products to sculpt his hair I’m just not washing it for a day or so and wearing a hat so it’s more controllable. I should emphasize he went out and looked for a homosexual hairstylist. Dick’s International, where I head before going home for the holidays, charges 10 dollars and they finish with a handheld vibrator massage on your shoulders. Dick may be gay, but it isn’t part of the fee. Where does the extra $40 come in across town?

There are people out there who want to pay money for things. I know that. How much they will pay amazes and embarasses me. Jimbo gets it though. Some people have disposable income and don’t need to wait for a pair of shoes that fit to be thrown away before the corns will reside.