Say what you like about them, there's something great about a good charity shop. I don't necessarily mean good as in tidy, or even with good stuff in. It's more about a vibe, an ambience. It's possibly the sort of ambience that thrift shops and crap 'vintage' shops try and give off; but that's the problem: They try and put across that kind of atmosphere. The best thing about the best charity shops is they don't try.
Wait, no. The best thing about charity shops is that no-one bothers you in them. There's no grinning, false tosspot with a 'customer journey-ladder' (or similarly ridiculous implement) shoved up their backside, trying to get you to buy stuff. Personally, if I go in a charity shop that doesn't have a retired lady behind the counter with a cup of tea, whilst a dyed-blonde, 40-something manager has a quiet fag out the back, I feel uneasy.
If, like me, you yearn for spring mornings spent looking up and down racks of late-90s CD singles or wet Wednesday afternoons checking out the spines of 30p paperbacks; always seeking that elusive thing you've been after for ages, or stumbling upon something new you've never heard of (well, it's worth a go for 45p) then I could recommend many, many great charity shops in Birmingham.
Sutton Coldfield's Settlement Shop gets the nod over the others, because it's one shop I've frequented for years and always fulfils my hitherto unanalysed expectations of what a great British charity shop is about.
The volunteers are never less than friendly, the books are always in order (the unspoken mark of a charity shop that cares) and the records are - by and large - cheap. There's genuine warmth to the place, which makes one glad that such places and people still exist. In a time when a lot of charity shops have gone inflationary and what one might have cost 20p is now labelled at a tenner; Sutton's Settlement Shop, and all the others I've visited (including Wylde Green, Boldmere and Erdington) keep ploughing their humble, homely furrow.
1989 novelty tie? £15 stereo with twin-cassette deck? Obscure board game? Brown and cream food blender with yellowing instruction manual? Fishing DVDs? What more could the eclectic drifter and borderline hoarder want?
It goes without saying (though I'm saying it anyway) that despite the customer angle of this review, charity shops exist to raise money for worthwhile causes. The Settlement Shop for instance is a Birmingham-based charity helping the poor, old and young in our city. I don't wanna get guilt-trippy on ya 'cos that's not why I go round these places but I dunno why prats like Mary Portas moan about the amount of charity shops 'cos they're doing good work for someone somewhere. That the Sutton Settlement Shop do it by providing me with endless amounts of books (in this very shop I stumbled on an expensive student edition of King Lear, which came in no end of help when studying at nightschool, for 90p (RRP: £17.50)) and gives us all a place to search for hidden treasure away from the faceless consumerism of today's retail parks is all the better. read more
