If you come here, make sure you have a ton of time…read more
For me, this store was always the kind of afterthought after a customary excavation of the Salvation Army Store (separate review) right across the street. There were always curiosities in this musty, cluttered, but generally tidy antiques shop, but as I was usually looking for clothing fit for high school halls, bloomers from actual Victorian times or rigid fringed leather vests from the 1970s were just too real and too anachronistic for me. And to my untrained eye, the other curios filling the shop appeared to be the kind of old, creepy junk that you could find in any elderly person's attic or basement.
Approximately seven years later, two of which were spent working for a prestigious design and architecture firm, either my taste has changed or the store's contents have changed...or both.
It was already late when my mother and I exited the Salvation Army, so we were going to hurry homewards. But then, I saw something irresistable; a green Celtics sweatshirt, appliqued with a leprechaun and all sorts of bright banners. It was simply amazing.
I burst in through the door, demanding the price of the shirt. One lady scrambled up into the display window to check out the tag.
"Fifty," she said, as I groaned in defeat, "...and it looks like the price is firm."
"Don't worry," I said sullenly, "Somebody will DEFinitely buy that."
My consolation was to find an antique glass lamp; the kind that looks like a kerosene lantern from the days of the pioneers but holds a regular bulb. I asked to see if it worked, and the same lady who crushed my dreams of the Celtics sweatshirt brought it over to the spacious area behind the counters and tried plugging it in.
"Hmm...might be a bad bulb," she said, and spent the next several minutes gently coaxing the glass chamber out of the base in order to put a brand new bulb in and show me that the lamp indeed worked very well, and could be all mine for $12.99.
I spied a nice deep sink with fancy handsoap and feebly asked if I could wash the layers of thift shop grime off my hands. No problemo!
With clean hands, I placed my lamp aside in a safe spot and continued browsing the store, truly tempted by a $6.50 white hobnail glass sugar and creamer set, oval gilded frames with handstitched images, $1.50 to $3.99 antique portraits and negatives, a $3.99 DVD of Blue Crush, a $4.99 cardigan from Abercrombie and Fitch (before the store started marketing solely to 10 year olds), a $24 painting of a sailboat, an $8 length of brightly cross-stitched linen, an $8 black lighter with a cross-stitched rose and a gold plated top (I don't even smoke!), and a $50 toilet seat made of shells and sea creatures epoxied in place by a pearly glaze.
Meanwhile, my mother had made it deep into the belly of the store, where there were Pendleton jackets for 5 bucks (the "urban woodsmen" of Williamsburg could just DIE here), an illustrated book by Erica Jong on the social history and current existence of witches, purses, antique sewing machines, fancy lighters, more hobnailed glassware, and on and on.
The sounds of the two ladies closing up shop and whispering about possible closure during a snow storm on the next day made the sweat course down our backs as we rooted ever faster through so many old treasures.
The genius behind this store is that the antiques are completely usable, especially within the semi-nautical aesthetic of most New England homes. But the prices are so outrageously cheap that it is impossible to walk into this store without buying a BUNCH OF STUFF.
Case in point; we walked up to the register past closing time to impulse buy a tuned and freshly stringed Suzuki No. 6 model guitar (and case) for $48, a painted cowhide purse for $2.95, and the aforementioned $12.99 lamp.
"Did you expand this store?" I asked.
"No, it's always been like this..." the ladies replied.
"Are you sure? I remember it being tiny."
"Maybe we cleaned it up," they said.
I asked how long the store had been around and whatnot. The answer I got began,
"Well, first it was Auntie Em's, then Jennies...."
What I concluded was that this store has been around for at least 15 years, and like the objects within, has changed many hands. But the hands have all been gentle and the goods have remained good. This is a real score if you are looking for unique gifts for a very special someone (or for yourself)...all for the price of a rotgut cocktail in NYC.
