Filed under: clothes clothes clothes, DIY, made in berlin, music, style, vintage | Tags: bags, Boxhagener Platz, fabrics, Flea Markets, friedrichshain, jewels, Mauerpark, pooristhenewrich, prenzlauer berg, shopping, threads, thriftstores, vintage
Here I am, sheepishly awkward, feeling sort of like I should, like, recant some things I’ve said not so long ago. To wit, that is, the thrift stores I said some more or less nice things about. This is not say that they aren’t excellent stores in their own right, nor do I necessarily mean to eat my words, so to speak.
I REPEAT I am not hating on vintage stores. I <3 vintage stores.
too much, probably, it has been argued
BUT. but. I’m onto them. i used to assume that vintage store owners had some mysterious monopoly on cool cheap shit, some esoteric relic pipeline or maybe a timemachine but this is not true, not in Berlin. we all have access to the raw materials. all. all those with free time on Sundays.
FLEA MARKETS friends, where these shops clearly get their goods from, then turn around to sell at KUH-RAAZYYY inflated prices. Now I know the secret. There is no going back. Irreversible and existentially hazardous as your own long ago personal unmasking of the santa claus/stork mythology. Truth.
Exhibit A: Mauerpark
I’ve heard some prissy bitches say things like, Mauerpark is crowded expensive etc. blah.
I don’t know what they mean by this, except that probably they hate pretty things and people.
Mauerpark is a huge park in Prenzlauer Berg. Every Sunday the flea market claims like half of it.
Mauerpark flea market is a big-kid party, highlights include -outdoor karaoke madness:
*yes these ppl are ALL watching one tragically brave individual under the technicolor beach umbrella interpret Britney into a microphone, whipping around periodically, boozily to read words off the prompter located, meanly, inexplicably, behind his back. karaoke 2.0*
-lawn-lazing:
-and a wide selection of nourishing refreshments:
then this cool lady will make you a tortilla or something:
maybe you will find your way back to weird mementos of a lost childhood:
maybe you’ll weirdly laugh at someone else’s lost mementos:
but in the end you will have a prize: buttons, baubles, batteries, timekeepers and stuffholders ruthlessly bargained for and proudly won. i got all this stuff for less than 30euros. you may not understand, but they are treasures
Mauerpark is magic. just you try naming something you’d rather do with your hangover on a Sunday afternoon.
Exhibit B: Boxhagener Platz
So what is homeboy in the photo at the very top of this post so surprised about?
perhaps it’s because my eagle eyes picked up a dark relic i wasnt sposed to find?
*but why was it for sale? i like to give ppl the benefit of the doubt, specially ones with cool glasses, so let’s say for now that he didn’t know*
even tho, volume-wise, it’s just not fair to compare it to mauerpark, boxhagener platz is one stellar flea-vendor.
scary dubious old photos aside, trawling this little magic one-block radius on a goalless Sunday is like panning for gold. among utter junk, there are festive festoons and softly scintillating baubles>>
and then there were things of true beauty>>
this jewelry was so cool, and definitely original, but the guy at the booth had zero information to give: I don’t know who made them/how they were made/if there is more. alls i know is I want the chandeliers.>>
yea.
there’s a weird mix of vendors who are clearly antique/vintage dealers and know what their stuff is worth(/suffer delusional fantasies about what their stuff is worth), and random ppl who just throw cool shit at you for pennies
so the other rad thing i noticed bout this plc is the plethora of receptacles on offer. i love to put things away, so boxes and purses and cabinets are what i need to feel happy and zen.>>
speaking of receptacles, the end of the adventure is that i found a shadowbox and left in ecstasy.
plz note also my other wonders, acquired for nearly nothing. not pictured is a shirt that was free and a plaid wool skirt for 30cents.
THE end
?
Filed under: boutiques, clothes clothes clothes, made in berlin, style, vintage | Tags: dresses, garage, memory, pooristhenewrich, scarves, shopping, threads, thriftstores, vintage
This right here is a work in progress. Since thrift store shopping is just something that happens to me, like a tornado in a trailer park, a sinus infection, there is as little way to avoid its happening again as there is of knowing when and where it might wrap its sludgy tentacles around my brain
Already discussed in an earlier post, previous occasions have seen me at the likes of Lindt 2nd hand, in Kreuzberg, and Humana, in Friedrichshain.
Gradually, perilously, my experience with Berlin thrift swells like a water balloon left unattended on the hose in the backyard as you run inside to answer the phone and then its just AT&T wanting to talk about your long distance plan (do those still exist?) and the heat makes you forget about whatever sinister plans you had for the balloon and you get a popsicle and check your email and then you drip purple sugar water on the keyboard and have to wipe it off with ur sleeve &then youre like ah crap that was dumb now i have to change my shirt…
What all this means is that the other day I decided it was thrift store day.
having nothing else to do, i gave myself a mission: make a list of thrift stores, hit as many as you can. my scavenger hunt began at this randomly selected an- und verkauf (buy/sell) place in pankow near S+U Schönhauser Allee, found by googling, which turned out to be called “Dies&Das”, in addition to having been permanently closed and gutted since an indeterminate time ago.
its (was) on the corner of schivelbeiner&malmöer str., but dont go there, obv.
still, the visit wasn’t a total waste of time since I had some adventures on the way.
on shivelbeiner str. i discovered a miraculous arachnid.
& all this time i thought spiders were just being rude when they ignore me asking them to fucking stop building homes in the corners of my room.each day brings new facts into my world.
Then on the way back to the train i went into a little chinese dollar store where the elderly chinese shopkeeper talked to me (topic unclear) in what may or may not have been german, but a sweet man, generally. i bought 4 jeans zippers in different colors for 1euro each and considered, but finally abandoned, some peacock feathers (50cents). is that a good deal for peacock feathers? I have never tried to buy them before.
At u2 senefelder platz things really got started; here I visited Memory (Schwedter Str. 2; café next door, same owners; +49 160 650 14348), a vintage store I can confidently recommend.
As hand-picked vintage goes, this is an impressive little boutique.
If ur looking to dig up cheap treasures from piles of junk (my favorite activity, but rare, at least around here) u best look elsewhere. the polyester, bakelite, leather’n'silk, orange, brown and candy-colored assortment here has clearly been pre-selected and priced accordingly, though it’s still remarkably affordable, comparatively.
Scores the highest points in the accessories and household items category, with lots of retro pitchers and tea services and sweet, brightly colored plastic jewelry–a jar of shark bangles in red and blue (4euro each) caught my eye, and some creepy little DDR dog/cat/owl pins were kinda cool too (also 4eur)
if you ever decide you dont have enough pink egg cups….
The selection of clothes, handbags and shoes is small but careful. White button-up YSL corset top for 55 euro? Check. (see pic above). had to make mental list of other things worth 55eur to keep from making it mine immediately.
The owner is a really personable and helpful lady, and happily put my precious SHARP GF-800 weird ghettoblaster device on hold for me for several days while i thought about how my life would be different if i had one. i went back first thing the next day and i’ve never looked back (ended up putting me out 65eur, but worth it). I can even hook it up to my ipod/macbook. also, now i can finally play tapes.2tapes.
also found this cool treasure chest of plastic and metal which i ended up not buying, woulda cost 12 euro, which isnt THAT bad, but still.
Chat with the owner revealed that the vintage business is rough these days, surprise, as most others are too, so help them out! buy weird retro pitchers and not weird IKEA ones.
In this spirit i continued my journey, down to U1/2/3/4 Nollendorfplatz, Kleidermarkt Garage (Ahornstr. 2).
So far, this is really the closest Ive found to quality salvation-army-style shopping in Berlin, with plenty of junk and items of questionable quality to sort through in search of diamonds and rubies and golden emerald treasures.
Items are roughly divided into two separate pricing categories: some are hand-picked and individually-priced; anything without a specific price designation costs 13,99 euro a kg. (30% off “happy hour” on wed. 11am-1pm) (have to say the hand-picked stuff is clearly better, for the most part, but the quality of vintage can be pretty random, natch)
If you for some reason happen to be looking for a vintage fedora your search is probably over. Bins and bins of hats abandoned by old lonely German men seem to be the theme here, about 10 euro each.
Also home to a vast rainbow of bright pouffy, ribbony taffeta 80s-style party dresses.
But I was there for a long time, and somehow in the end the only thing out of the armful of randoms I was carrying around that I couldnt put down was this (prtty xlnt) military-style scarf event (4,99eur)
they did have a lot of scarves, which gets them extra points. sort of makes up for all the abercrombie garbage.
dont be sad! theres more to come.
Filed under: alltag, boutiques, clothes clothes clothes, style, vintage | Tags: fabrics, humana, kafka, kreuzberg, lindt, shopping, threads, thriftstores, ubiquitous streetart, vintage, visby
OR: HOW I LEARNED ABOUT TREND TRANSPARENT
One of the charming aspects of living in Germany is that periodically you are invited to immerse yourself in Kafka’s bureaucratic nightmare world. This is truly a delight for any person.
Yesterday it was a matter of officially registering myself as a resident of Berlin, receiving a card which will permit me to pay taxes (thanx) and getting sthg of unclear nature called a “rote Karte”, the last of which having mutated into my mission for today.
My notes begin like this: ‘the problem with writing when bored may be that you only ever have boring things to say’. o right. good point.
I go on to establish myself as a creepy ubahn character. ‘its fun to look @ppl until just that instant when it gets weird; they feel your eyes on them, maybe wonder whats going through your head, glance back, hostile, curious, alarmed, confused, bemused.’
Followed by a nonsequitur ‘wtf postnasal drip from antibiotics?’ i rly was wondering this at the time though (is it normal? still don’t know)
On the U8 I think about the U8. Chummy, harmless, it is nice and wide, like the U5, there’s enough space for everybody’s knees and elbows, babies and dogs. It’s full of friendly types like tourists and large clean families, shoppers and activeppl. it is not like the U1, cagey and hard, eyelinerstalebeerknowinglaughter. My furtive observational demeanor is definitively out of place here.
Outside, the weather is playing jokes again, one minute rain like the ocean turned upsidedown then it stops abruptly & before I have time to close it the wind has turned my umbrella inside out snapping one of its mechanical spiderlegs so it droops sadly now on one side like a tent left out in the backyard all summer. sometimes the sun comes out.
Shortly after I enter the preposterous beehive of hallways and offices and waiting rooms that is the Bürgeramt. having finished registering without a hitch and only a short wait, miracle miracle, I logically decide to travel around the corner to the Finanzamt for my Lohnsteuerkarte. Here I wander around until I find the Info-area, take a number, the ticker dings instantly, I walk in, notice how I had to take a number even though no one else is waiting.
The woman sends me back to the Bürgeramt. This is where Lohnsteuerkarten are to be had. I slink back around the block, get a new number (for which i also have to wait in a line in some obscure and unmarked corner of the waiting room) back to my seat, back to watching the sign like a digital alarm clock from the 80s, bigred lightup numbers chiming every 30 sec sounding like the seatbelt light on an airplane. 177. i have 188, had 165 earlier. if i’d known.
Now the number sign seems to be using it’s imagination, getting zany and bold, 245, 457, 321. 188?plz?
For reasons unknown, the Bürgeramt had a book exchange table downstairs, which donated these treasures to me:
While waiting i get sthg advertised as peach iced tea from the coffee machine, out drops a tiny crimped brown plastic cup and almost just as quickly it was frothing over with mysterious brew, this continued for 10 sec, fizzy liquid sloshing into the grate underneath. what I got, finally, tasted like when you order gingerale at a chinese restaurant but there is no syrup left in the fountain so you get like bubbly dishwater. drank it all.
There is a flat-screen TV in one corner playing a program called “Warte-TV für Berliner Bürgerämter”, this seems like the strangest thing thats happened all day. Now they are showing sthg called “Kleintier-Vermittlung”, helping rodents connect with other rodents, rabbits seeking chinchillas, bios include details like “had a cold”.
Finally finally finally it is my turn, I find the room, I sit down, I talk to the lady, she makes a big mean sad face at me, I don’t need what I think I need (Lohnsteuerkarte), in fact she can’t give me one just now, it is not allowed for me to have this. It has taken me 2 hrs to find this out.
So instead of throwing myself into oncoming traffic I spend an hour in a thrift store. Lindt 2nd Hand Clothes, Kortestr. 16 (tel 030 691 79 10), open mon-fri 11-18h. Slightly less self-destructive and just as effective at helping me forget my wasted day. at first went inside because it used to be a chocolate shop, still has Lindt signs all over the place, probably i was hungry. it is one of those weird berlin stores with baby doll heads and weird crocheted items for dubious purposes propped up everywhere you look. they have a pretty good selection, of course hand-picked and so multiple times what you would expect to pay for ‘old clothes’, youll pay btw 9 and 15 for a shirt, 20-30 for a dress. weird or interesting or “kult” items can be disproportionately exorbitant, this pair of white 80s overalls i thought were ‘kinda cool’ would have cost 70. but then i found this amazing fur hat (too small for my head but fit the mysize barbie it was perched on just great), only 24. in the end I emerged with a weird shiny green suit perfect for the court jester I sorta felt like.
but it is pretty cool, no?
so Rote Karte today, which, as I found out only today, verifies that I understand what typhus is and that i should stay home from work if i have it. They also made sure (via video and pamphlet) that I know how to recognize when I have it, since food poisoning is obv so fun its sometimes easy to forget ur sick. This was today: flashback to high school health class, a room that smells like chalk and sweat and dirty mopwater, rowed up mismatched chairs facing an open TV cabinet. The movie will be 18 mins says the woman who led us here from the waiting room like ducklings, wider than she is tall. The poor Spanish kid I saved from being sent home until he could return with a translator (he spoke some English) is sitting next to me, not understanding a word.
To recover I go shopping again. First I take the S-Bahn to Warschauer Str., Visby store on Gärnterstraße outfits me with a spacesuit, perfect for all this rain and hellweather.
finally on the way home, in hopes of finding thrift items NOT priced at twice what they cost when they were new, I hit Humana 2nd hand, Frankfurter Tor 3, a 5-story behemoth that somehow managed to contain nothing of value or interest, and even so was overpriced, besides an umbrella, another useful item for this weather, which i managed to haggle down to 3 euro, tossing my crippled one on the way out.
Humana might be worth investigating for raw amusement factor, though, the 5th floor being comprised entirely of what some alien interpreted as “TREND”, 50s/60s/70s/80s vintage, though it happens to be a selection of the most horrible things in the store, not necessarily even all that old.
Trend Transparent seems to be items made of brightly colored, fine mesh, something Topanga might have worn on Boy Meets World. Humana keeps the secret of this trend highly guarded. (actually im pretty sure i knew about this trend when i was in 6th grade.) Its time the whole world learned about trend transparent.
