Your Weekend Plans: The Vintage Bazaar

Yesterday Libby asked if I had any tablecloths I can bring to The Vintage Bazaar and I said, “Libby, I don’t own any tablecloths. I’m a modernist.”

Hello? Is this mic on?

But seriously folks: is it the weekend of the Vintage Bazaar already? It seems like just yesterday I was sending my first cryptic Tweet about it. And now it’s here!

The Vintage Bazaar - a modern pop up flea market
@ DANK Haus, 4740 N Western
Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010
NOON – 5pm

You’re coming, right? 40 vintage vendors of varying varieties (seriously I did just make that up) all crammed into a giant ballroom with food and drink and DJ entertainment. Whatever the weather is, it’ll be nice inside DANK.

Read some vendor interviews on TVB vendor Heliopsis’ blog:

Are You Pumped for The Vintage Bazaar? Part One & Part Two

Check out our hot press coverage (now you KNOW it’s legit):

Chicago Home & Garden

Daily Candy

Strange Closets

Chicagoist

Are you as pumped as we are?!?!??!  See you there!

Need Furniture? 4 Thrift Stores to Visit

I just got this email from a reader:

I’m a fairly new follower to your blog, and a very new thrift store junkie…  so I’m hoping you can help me out! While my house is currently full of “affordable” Ikea, I’m starting to look for pieces with a little more love and a lot more character. Right now, I’m in desperate need of a pair of (matching) nightstands, and I’m hoping I can find something that I could potentially paint and turn into little statement pieces for my bedroom. Problem is – I’m in Oak Park, and the stores out here just don’t have much. We have a (small) Brown Elephant that I’ve been checking constantly, and a Goodwill that has a teeny overpriced furniture section. Can you recommend any stores in the city with big furniture selections that I can check out this weekend?

Why, yes. Yes I can.

I understand the desperate search for the right furniture piece at the right price. It’s frustrating to try and drive all over the city looking for the just right piece of furniture on the second hand market. It’s so much easier to go to a one-stop shop like Ikea, but where’s the character in that?

Whenever someone asks me for a one-stop furniture recommendation in the Chicago thrift store scene, I recommend these places:

Jubilee Furniture – a literal warehouse of used furniture that’s only open two days a week and is located in Carol Stream. Limited hours, long drive — but highly, highly recommended. They even recently started a blog!

610 E. North Ave., Carol Stream, IL 60188

See my Flickr set from Jubilee here.

St. Vinny’s Thrift Store — Milwaukee – It’s time we all realized Milwaukee is just a far north suburb of Chicago — at least where your thrifting is concerned. I’ve sent countless people up to Badger country to find furniture at this mother of all thrift stores and they’ve all agreed: worth the drive.

2320 W Lincoln Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53215

See my Flickr set from St. Vincent DePaul in Milwaukee here.

Urban Thrift – whine all you want, The Ark on Lincoln is no longer. Urban Thrift has taken its place. But this means this mothership of a  Lakeview thrift store is now open on Saturdays. And if you saw my recent Tweet about the vintage metal lockers I found while shopping there last, you’ll agree that you can find some pretty sweet furniture deals here.

3345 N Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL 60657

See my Flickr photo set from Urban Thrift here.

Stop! Look! isn’t a massive thrift store but it’s a decent bet you can find a good plant stand, bench, end table, stool set or side chair here if you stop by frequently enough. It’s centrally located on Western Ave. in Ukrainian Village, too, so it’s easy to — um — Stop! Look!

1307 N Western Ave., Chicago, IL 60622

See my set of Flickr photos from Stop! Look! here.

Those aren’t all the stores in the city where you can find a decent selection of furniture second-hand. I think both the Oak Park and Andersonville Brown Elephants have a fair amount of decent furniture and fast turnover, although they’re heftily priced. And I’ve seen interesting pieces pop up at the South Kedzie Unique and the Unique on Sheridan (my personal favorite).

To hit up a number of thrift stores in one day, check out my handy driving map.

Last bit of advice: don’t overlook estate sales as an awesome place to find furniture. Visit EstateSales.net to browse through photos of current estate sales or sign up for my weekly BackGarage Garage Sale Hotlist to get tips on the best bets for finding furniture and more every weekend in Chicago.

Things I Learned in Berlin, Pt. 2:
4 Tips for Finding Second Hand When You Travel

Let’s face it: thrift stores aren’t exactly in the tourist parts of most towns. They aren’t in guidebooks, either. And, because many of them have bizarre names, odd hours and are off the beaten path, even if you do track one down it’s hard to know exactly how to get there or if they’ll be open, especially if you don’t speak the language.

Here are MY four tips for tracking down thrift stores when you travel — in your own country or abroad.

1. Define second hand. People call second hand shops different things. Resale shops, thrift stores, clothing swaps. Flea markets have different names in different parts of the country, too.  I still can’t wrap my mind around the Californian “swap meet,” which to me sounds like I have to barter rather than buy, but a swap meet is just a flea market with palm trees.  If you’re traveling overseas you have the biggest challenge. Even in English-speaking countries thrift stores have different names (in Australia they’re “op shops,” for instance), so get familiar with the local lingo or foreign tongue and define what you’re looking for. And keep in mind you may have to differentiate from antique shops and other high end markets.

2. Ask a native. The best way to get information about what you’re looking for is to ask someone who lives there. This may sound obvious, but here’s another trick: don’t wait until you get there to do so.  Do some research beforehand.  If you’re staying with someone, tell them you want to visit a thrift store (or swap meet, or op shop) so they can start to do research about where such stores are located and when they operate (I mean — not everyone you visit has a flea market schedule or thrift store map tacked to the back wall of their frontal lobe).

Don’t know someone in the town you’re visiting? Harness the power of the Internet. TheThriftShopper has a pretty good guide to thrift stores in the U.S. Or Google “thrift stores South Dakota,” use Yelp, do a blog search for “Copenhagen second hand” — whatever you have to — to find real people talking about real experiences thrifting in the city you’re about to visit.  And reach out to them.  I get an email a week from someone visiting Chicago — or another city I’ve thrifted in — asking for advice on where to go.  I’m always happy to give it.

3. Plan, plan, plan your trip. Rick Steves writes a really cheesy guidebook to Paris and Jem and I were embarrassed to break it out on the Metro while we were over there two years ago, but without Rick we never would have found the Paris flea market Marche aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt, because his guidebook had explicit instructions: what train stop, which way to turn, how far to walk along a wall, where to cross the street, where to cut into the vendor booths and how far to persevere through the Looney Tunes sweatshirts and turtle foot keychains before you hit upon the good stuff.  You need this kind of information, especially if you’re without the aid of a native, especially if you don’t speak the language.  (You can read about our Paris adventure and see photos of the original flea market here.)  So prepare a map with detailed instructions and bring it with you.

Also — plan ahead which day you’re going to attempt your second hand adventure and make sure the destinations are open.

4. Ask the shopowner. Once you find what you’re looking for it’s sometimes useful to ask the owners or employees of one shop to direct you to more shops like them.  This is probably easier in the U.S. or wherever you speak the language, but if you learn a few words beforehand and carry a street map and a pen you could probably get information to help you in other countries, too.  (Oh — and you know everyone speaks English anyway.)  Your native friends and the Internet can provide a lot of information about the second hand scene, but those who live it every day can probably provide a lot more.  It’d be a pity for you to travel halfway across the world to one thrift store only to miss the other thrift store just around the corner… only because you didn’t ask.

3 Ways to Hit the Reset Button on Your Style

A while ago I blogged about how the Back to School season makes me want to start fresh.  Writing a daily blog about home design makes you feel the same way: every other month I want a new look.  But here’s the problem — and it’s a problem I think anyone immersed in the world of how people decorate their homes has: it’s overload.  We’re taking so much information in, we don’t leave room for what’s already in us to begin with: we start to lose our own sense of personal style.  Wall decals, deer, owls, Steelcase tanker desks, the Eames rocker, turquoise furniture, cowhide rugs…  How many of you have fallen victim without asking yourselves, “Do I really like this?  Or am I just supposed to like it?”

How do we hit the reset button and find inspiration inward?  Here are three tips.

Old photos.  Dig through your personal archives.  Do you have photos of your room as a teenager?  Your dorm?  Think about a time when you didn’t care what others thought about your living space and find a picture of your living space from that time.  (If you can’t find a picture, spend some time visualizing the space from memory.)  What still inspires you?  What design rules are you breaking?  Think back to that time: what did you like most about your space?

(Glynnis Ritchie’s amazing Flickr photo set The Bedroom Project is a great source for inspiration.  The set features teenagers in their bedrooms and each photo contains a mini-interview asking the dwellers what they like best about their space.)

Clear Your Design Cache. A month ago I counted the number of design blogs I subscribed to: 147.  Then I tried a little exercise.  I took out a pen and paper and wrote down, from memory, the design blogs I like to read.  There were about 30.  So I did something bold: I unsubscribed to every single one of the design blogs I hadn’t listed on paper.  I had to do it!  I was on such deep design blog burnout I could hardly churn out new content for BackGarage.  But you know what?  It was liberating.  I realized the people who really inspired me also have their own sense of style, don’t fall victim to trends, and write with a passionate personal voice that, while focused mainly on design, occasionally deviates from it to talk about family, or work, or personal problems.

Of course if you clear your design cache (which might be blogs, might be magazines, might be your Flickr groups or favorite Etsy sellers) you might not find the same thing I found.  Maybe you’ll find you just like blogs that do product roundups, or focus only on mid century, or renovation, or on funny things found while thrifting.  But I guarantee if you pare down by making hand written list of only those favorites you can write from memory, you’ll find your personal style reflected in the choices that remain.

And don’t worry — you can add more later!

Free associate on Flickr.  Now that you’ve cleared up some mental space by clearing out your available palate of design inspiration, try seeing where your mind will lead you.  Visit Flickr and let your subconscious do the typing.  What kind of spaces do you want to look at?  Don’t censor yourself.  If you thought, “farmhouse kitchen,” go with it.  If you did, “retro beach house,” go with it.  If you want an “Ernest Hemingway writing room,” or a “punk bed,” or “Paris balcony,” I tell you — ask the oracle!  She will provide it.

As you search and find results you like, drag them to your desktop or favorite them.  Save them for your virtual scrapbook.  But keep feeding more words in — without thinking about it — until you have 20 or 30 photos to work with.

Then take a step back and admire your work.  What have you created?

As for myself, I pulled the photos you see in this post, plus many more photos of sparse German apartments, messy bedrooms, mattresses on floors, early 1980s and late 1970s squatter houses, John and Yoko love-in beds, and empty lofts.

Does this mean I’m going to re-do my space to fit these images?  Not really.  But at least I know what interests me without having it fed to me.

So what images do YOU come up with?  Feel free to put your favorite links in the comments.

How do YOU detox from design overload and rediscover your style?  Leave your tips in the comments.