Tragedy at a local thrift store

The Rowhouse Livin' household is devastated at the terrible news that six people perished at the Salvation Army thrift store at 22nd and Market Streets in Philadelphia yesterday. Our thoughts are with the victims' families and we fervently hope that the responsible individuals will be brought to justice.

I didn't visit that thrift store very often -- maybe once every few months -- but it was always a little busy when I was there. And there always seemed to be a baby or two there, so I was relieved, at least a very little bit, to hear that there were no very young victims.

If I'm not mistaken, that was the only thrift store (as opposed to upscale resale or consignment shop offering second-hand goods) in Center City Philadelphia. It was a very useful destination for casual clothing and housewares. The dishes I use for lunch and coffee at my office came from that very store. I'm very sorry to see it destroyed, and it seems unlikely, to me, that Salvation Army will find another Center City location with rent low enough to open a shop to replace it. But of course, this material loss pales in comparison to the unimaginable loss suffered by the friends and families of the deceased.

What an awful event in Philadelphia.

Philly flea market tomorrow, Saturday 15 September 2012

Super quick note today.

I don't know who these people are, the Phila Flea Markets, and their website doesn't indicate who their fundraising goes to, or give an EIN for me to check out their deal at Guidestar.org. But! For my bottom line, it's worth my while to take a leisurely spin through the flea market when it comes to my neighborhood to find a thing or two.

Over the years, I've found cast-iron cookware, a copy of the new, "improved" Joy of Cooking, a "real" Joy of Cooking from 1975, a big floppy straw hat I wear daily in the summer to prevent freckles and a sunburned nose, and some table linens.

The flea market sets up at different locations around the city throughout the summer and then moves to an indoor location over the winter. (This weekend they're in the Society Hill neighborhood at 3rd and Pine Streets.) Some vendors are one-time tag-salers, trying to clear out their basement or an estate. Other vendors are old hands. And not only are many vendors frequent flyers, but so is a lot of the merchandise, as well. That is, you'll see some of the same faces, and some of the same items, over and over again. And I mean over years, sometimes. But you'll find vendors with new merchandise still in its original packaging, too. Maybe it fell off a truck, who knows?

I'm not in the market for any major purchase at the moment. I could use a few kitchen implements -- a couple of particular utensils and a second, larger slow cooker -- but this weekend I'll mostly be window-shopping. Under the protection of my flea-market straw hat, of course.

Thrift store review: Friends of the Free Library's shops

Quick note today to mention a wonderful resource from the Free Library of Philadelphia, which traces its origins not to Benjamin Franklin but to a doctor and his wealthy uncle in the late 19th century. I'm not highlighting the Free Library itself, though every urban home economist in Philadelphia should have a card and use it often. Rather, I want to mention the Free Library's two bookstores, where the Friends of the Free Library unload gently used books at prices way below what you'll find in for-profit used-book stores.

The Book Corner, at 311 North 20th Street (at Wood Street), is farther away from the Rowhouse Livin' homestead, so we don't get there too frequently. But The Next Page, at 722 Chestnut Street (two blocks west of Independence Hall) is a lot closer. And dig it! Just this week, I picked up a copy of Freakonomics, a book I've flipped through before but wanted a permanent copy of at home.

I also found a popular historyabout colonialism in Africa. This book was published in 1998, and I think I learned about it three years ago. I didn't want to pay retail for it, and, like Freakonomics, I wanted a permanent copy for my bookshelf. (See, this is the kind of thing that passes for pleasure reading here at Rowhouse Livin'. Sad!) So I put it on my List: that is, The List of Books to Search For Every Time I Go to a Used-Book Store. Freakonomics was on The List, too. And I finally found them!

The Next Page on Chestnut Street is organized by topic, and the shelves are neat and clean. Unlike a neighborhood used-book store -- which I love, don't get me wrong -- you won't find jumbled, disordered stacks of books, dusty shelves, underlit passageways, or cats. Now, I really do love me a good neighborhood used-book store. But you can't use them for a "surgical strike" to find a particular book, unless you're looking for a dictionary or a Harry Potter. Of course, at The Next Page you won't be able to kill as much time as you would at another store, because what The Next Page gains in neatness, it sacrifices in depth and breadth.

That said, the prices are right at the Friends of the Free Library shops, because the books are donated. The shops operate as a fundraising arm for the Free Library, not as a revenue stream for a bookseller trying to make a living. So they can sell beautiful old editions of Nancy Drew volumes, or 19th-century antique books in excellent condition for a fraction of what you see in for-profit shops.

Hope you try the two Friends of the Free Library shops soon. Lovely resource, great cause, winning prices.

Thrift store review: Circle Thrift, Fishtown or South Broad Street

I want to love Circle Thrift, I really do. The space at the 2233 Frankford Ave location in Fishtown is large. The clothes are arranged by type and color. It's an actual charity shop with a charitable mission, as opposed to a fell-off-a-truck discount store or for-profit thrift store. The books and housewares are cheap; both locations are easy to get to via public transit; and the staff are friendly.

But the last few times I've been to the Frankford Ave shop, it's been overrun with screaming children -- I'm not "childfree," neither literally nor by inclination, but small children are "psychotic dwarfs with good prognoses" and require active attention in public. When my daughter was young and I took her shopping, I would tell her, "We're in a look-don't-touch store" and help her control her limbs accordingly. And for a few years there, I didn't have the luxury of slowly browsing my favorite haunts to leisurely try on clothes and pore over the bookshelves. I would have to make a list and hit the thrift stores in surgical strikes, head purposefully for the area I needed to search, and call the trip off if I didn't quickly find what I needed.

What I never did was to leave my daughter to entertain herself in front of the shelves of toys, or wait until she was screaming with boredom and tiredness before we'd skedaddle, or let her pull clothes from the racks and leave them all over the floor for the staff to tidy up. Circle Thrift, though. Ugh.

Unfortunately, it's not just screaming kids destroying merchandise. It's also that the music is generally turned up way too loud, even for hipster Fishtown. The South Broad Street location, at Federal Street, suffers from its small size and low, basement-level ceiling. The clothing tends to be older, shabbier, and less up-to-date than some other thrift stores. And in Fishtown at least, they don't seem to have an effective strategy for helping the homeless or troubled who come into the store. (I'm not a thrift store employee or manager, but I think the answer is not to let the person browse to their heart's content and try on clothing, which spoils the merchandise and deters other patrons from shopping. The shop can fulfill its mission to help a person in a dire condition without permitting a cat piss man situation in the store.)

I think my best bet will be to hit Circle Thrift earlier in the day, to avoid the little kids running around. And it's not the best place to rely on for clothes; it's better for clothing accessories (e.g., handbags), and for dishes, housewares, and linens.

Happy thrifting!