Even as a teacher will be proud of his students and their accomplishments, and their youthful enthusiasm, from time to time he must also show that he, too, is a well-established badass who still commands real
fear from his charges.
I'm speaking of
my good friend Bicycle, who is not only posting charts and used books he's gleaned from a dying civilization, but who has now made
a most brazen foray into my own home turf, the Grosset and the Dunlap. OMG!
What the bloody hell are you doing?!
Careful here, old friend, you need to tread lightly here,
you are entering a world of pain. Will the supply hold up? We don't know. We just don't know.
Like two old grizzlies, a show of potential force may be needed to keep actual fur from flying.
Thrifting in Seattle is serious business. We have high-quality stores, excellent goods here, a general will to recycle and re-use old things, and there are many competitors among the customers. I see books all the time that start out in the Value Village and wind up on the shelves of
Magus Books over in the University District. There are
mooks who do this for a living, sifting out anything of marginal value and reselling it, while I am a simple end-user. I buy to own.
Here's what I sifted from the world this weekend.
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| Pendleton board shirt, from Frederick & Nelson |
Pendleton shirts are among the most sought-after items in the thrift stores. They are beautiful and functional, perfect for the Pacific Northwest where I live.
This one has a store tag on it, from
Frederick and Nelson, which closed in 1992. The flagship Nordstrom full-line store is in their beautiful old building in downtown Seattle. So this shirt, in flawless condition, has been sitting in some grandpa's closet, preserved from moths, sweat, regular use, the years of
the grunge music and fashion, for over 23 years, so that I might pick it up for a mere $12.
I'll wear it to work this week.
I found this in the same Value Village (Lake City Way location):
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| Philip Woodhouse, Monte Cristo, Mountaineers, 1979 1st ed |
I've been looking for a nice copy of this book on a Cascades ghost-town for a long time, seen it in shops for $30-$40. Very happy to pick it up for $2.
And then I stumbled into this hoard at the Ballard Goodwill, for my kids.
You are entering a world of pain, Bicycle. Do you understand the kind of sick animals that are out here?
A couple of local histories:
Ernest Renan, a perennial favorite here in Deflation Land:
H. L. Mencken, because
fuck you:
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| Knopf, 1990 |
Charles II, because someone's got to clean up the mess.
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| Hutton, Charles II, Oxford, 1989 |
And last, a bit of cultural history that a lot of people do not know, that the horror of the 1960s actually began back in the 1950s as the dry-rot of the Beats and effete Northeast intellectuals. I'm excited to read this one.
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| Fred Kaplan, 1959: The Year Everything Changed, Wiley, 2009 |
I hope that this is enough, that I have made my position clear for now.
