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by Jay Hardwig
Other people's stuff: We love it. And if the current crop of antique, junk, thrift, and vintage stores are any indication, so do you. Austin has always harbored an appreciation for the old and used, but of late it has reached a critical mass, if you'll pardon the phrase: Thumbing through the Critic's Picks for 1998 Best of Austin, we couldn't help but notice a preponderance of used joints - from Thrift Land to Buffalo Exchange to Lawrence's Used Baby Furniture on South First. There are at least 20 such awards all told - and all deserved, in our minds. And it's not just us: We've noticed the rest of you out there thrifting as well. Why the sudden surge in support for these purveyors of all things used?
Perhaps it is our municipal ken for recycling, for wanting to get the best and most use out of every object that passes through town. Perhaps it is the bargain hunter in us, the literal cheap thrills we get from furnishing a pad at a fraction of the possible cost. Perhaps it is our weakness for the antique and authentic in a world changing faster than our dilapidated minds can handle. Perhaps it is the suspicion that these stores - each loved, loaded, and irretrievably unique - are pockets of concentrated personality in an increasingly generic city. Perhaps its just that we dig other people's stuff.
Perhaps we don't give a damn why - just give us a 10-spot and tell us when those doors open, baby, and we'll stop with the philosophizing already.
It can be as simple as a shoe. The last time we were in Limbo (5015 Duval, 302-4446), we fell in love with a man's shoe, size 81/2 B. It was the left shoe from a pair of two-tone Florsheim coolies circa 1940, archly stitched, flat-laced, and shot through with ventilation holes. The two colors are hard to describe, but if pressed we'd have to say tamarind and Milk Dud. And even though they didn't fit, we loved those shoes. Damn near bought them anyway.
Men's shoes aren't the first thing you'll notice when you walk into Limbo, a relatively new seven-dealer vintage shop located in the old New Bohemia digs on 51st & Duval comprised of many of the same dealers who stayed after New Bohemian moved to South Congress. There's alot of stuff in there after all, most of it more immediately noticeable than a pair of old shoes. There are Maxfield Parrish prints, "executive" yo-yos (don't ask), Schlitz Malt Liquor mirrors, and lots and lots of yarn art. There are lamps fashioned from old mixers and vacuum cleaners. There are racks and racks of über-hip clothing. And then there are the shoes.
"Cool and cheap" is how manager Ari Wagner describes the selection packed in Limbo, and it's hard to dispute. They buy most of their inventory direct from their customers, but like many vintage dealers, have also been known to frequent auctions, garage sales, and out-of-town thrift stores. ("Most of the thrift stores are pretty picked over here in Austin," Wagner explains; we beg to differ.)
As for the difference between vintage and thrift, Wagner points to selectivity. The merchandise at Limbo is more "collected," she says, so there's less digging through the chaff to find the wheat. The art of vintage is knowing the difference, she says, between "bad Eighties and good Eighties." (We didn't even know there was a difference ...)
So, for knowing the difference between bad Eighties and good Eighties, for their "cool and cheap" philosophy, for executive yo-yos and an abundance of yarn art, for having vintage stock at thrift prices, but particularly for those muy suave shoes, we award Limbo Best Vintage Expansion in the 1998 Best of Austin awards.
On a squat aluminum bookcase in the back room of Next to New lies a pair of used sheep shears. They're a little rusty, but with a drop of oil and little love, they could go a long way. Three bucks, the price tag says. But wait, there's more: On October 9 they'll be reduced to $2.25. On November 8, if they still haven't sold, $1.46. It's the pre-announced markdown, and it is standard policy at Next to New, a consignment and thrift store that sits just off Burnet Road (5308 Burnet, 459-1288).
Take that porcelain rabbit over there. $5.50 now, but $4.13 next month. $2.68 the month after that. Thirty video minutes of Foghorn Leghorn: $4.75/3.56/2.31. A set of Return of the Jedi commemorative glasses from Burger King, showing Jabba the Hutt's "Giant Sail Barge" bursting into flames: $3/2.25/1.46 each.
Of course, Next to New is not just sheep shears and Star Wars glasses. It also carries all those old regulars that make a thrift store great: ugly ties, costume jewelry, crestfallen sofas, and racks and racks of forsaken clothes. As any bargain hunter knows, there's gold in them thar racks.
Run by the Ladies' Ministry of St. David's Episcopal Church, Next to New has been hawking old blouses for almost 40 years. "Instead of selling cakes and cookies and doing bake sales and things of that nature," Assistant Manager Milly Nunis says of Next to New, "they decided to do this. And it sprouted and grew and sprouted and is still growing." Profits from the store are split down the middle, with half of the proceeds going to restoration of St. David's and the other half going to a squadron of local charities, including El Buen Samaritano, Hospice Austin, and the Center for Battered Women.
For rusty sheep shears, for the porcelain rabbit, for the semiannual three-dollar sidewalk sales and the Ozark Mountain Hoedown tape in the cassette rack, but most of all for their all-volunteer efforts to raise money for local charity, The Austin Chronicle names Next to New the Best Church Lady Thrift Store - 1 in Austin. (You'll have to check the "Best of Austin" Critics Shopping Picks for Best Church Lady Thrift Store - 2!)
The most valuable objects in Andy Castillo's Seventh Street junk shop (2510 E. Seventh, 477-4615) are not for sale. They are the family pictures, hung in stray places around his densely (and we do mean densely) packed store. One in particular is striking: Taken three years ago, it shows a gaunt, muscular Castillo, then 71, smiling broadly in the midst of a mountain of unnamable junk.
There are many such mountains in Castillo's place: It is, almost literally, a jungle in there. To get from one room to the next, you have to walk single file, stepping over beer cans and peanut butter jars, ducking old boots, doorknobs, softball trophies, and the occasional used TV. There are six rooms packed to the rafters with stuff, and Castillo himself has no idea what lies beyond the first wave of tacked-up and tied-down merchandise. He once had to search 30 minutes for a 75¢ part, he recalls, and didn't even make the sale.
"Over 40 years of accumulation," Castillo's business card brags, and it's hard to imagine how he'd fit another day's worth into his wire and tin can empire. But bring something by - a busted iron, a stray wrench, a salvaged light switch - and Castillo just might take it and find a rare open peg for it in his shop.
"To them it's junk, but to me I see treasure," Castillo explains, giving the example of his homemade shoe horn, fashioned from an old medicine bottle and now hanging from his belt, ready for immediate use. "I see good in everything."
For seeing good in everything, for finding treasure where others find junk, for understanding the essential worth of any object, but mostly for the unimaginable tangle of stuff that literally chokes his Seventh Street store, we award Andy Castillo Best Human Approximation of a Rabbit Warren.
"You can test turtle shell by taking off a little piece and burning it," Brian Hurt says, pushing his wire-framed glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. "And it smells just like burning fingernail. And that's a hard thing to duplicate."
Hurt, co-proprietor and official "mouthpiece" for Hurt's Hunting Grounds (712 Red River, 472-7680) is explaining how he set about restoring the early French "Louis the Something" table that rests at his feet. That's turtle shell inlay, he says, he's sure of it. He does not say where he got to know the smell of burning fingernail.
Sprawled over four buildings on both sides of Red River, Hurt's Hunting Grounds advertises "antiques and used furniture," but in truth, it's one of the last of the old-time junkshops. It's been in the family since the early 1900s. Back then it was known as J.B. Branton & Son's, and it sold everything from furniture to used cars to old mules. (The site now occupied by the Atomic Cafe was once the Branton mule barn.) By mid-century, Branton's was the antique store in Austin, and Red River was the place to shop, a lively commercial strip with a few old mansions standing about, high-class but not suffocatingly so. Red River has seen a lot of change since then - drugs move in, retail moves out, nightclubs move in, drugs move out - but as self-described "slow movers," Brian and Brenda Hurt are content to stay put, proud junk peddlers on a street that has long since given up the retail ghost.
Did we say junk? There's plenty of nice stuff at Hurt's, to be sure - elegant lamps, old oak headboards, antique American furniture that'll cost you a pretty penny plus some - but the joy is in the odd castoffs that lie willy-nilly about the place: old banjos, chipped statuary, Flexible Flyers, a working railroad signal, hand-me-down taxidermy, a crossbow, some rather unfortunate art, a raft of broken down furniture to be sold in its "natural condition."
A little bit of everything, you might say, but there is one castoff Hurt hasn't been able to lay hands on: a blowgun. "I've always wanted a blowgun, but I've never been able to find one. Everybody who's had one wouldn't sell. That may be a personal hang-up."
For knowing the smell of burning turtle shell (and burning fingernail), for having a fondness for irregular dovetails, for keeping chairs hung from the ceiling and Flexible Flyers stacked in the corners, for his quest for the ultimate blowgun, and perhaps most of all for being slow movers in times of rapid change, we award Brian & Brenda Hurt of Hurt's Hunting Grounds a 1998 Best of Austin Critic's Award for Best Junkshop.