shop cheap. look loaded.

Clothes-by-the-pound options in this city are slim at best. While the Goodwill Outlet Center has afforded me my fair share of cheap thrills in the past, the act of tackling it in earnest is exhaustifying. Also occasionally nauseating. The responsibility of stocking a vintage/thrift boutique means I’ve recently found myself in dire need of GOC alternatives.

You’re probs thinking “Hang the eff on. You mean you stock stuff you buy by the pound, and sell it individually for a higher price?” You bet your ass I do, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. When you’re stocking a vintage/thrift boutique, and you want to keep your price points reasonable – cheap, even – you’ve gotta go off the grid to find the goods. Our stock costs are lower than most because a shit ton of time and energy goes into finding what we eventually sell. This enables us to tack on a small convenience charge for our efforts in lieu of the offensive mark-ups often seen at other vintage/thrift stores – a fair trade off, methinks.

Revealing where I get some of my stock could, perhaps, result in a loss of business, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. My feeling is, if you’ve got the cojones to go where I go and shop how I shop, I’m not about to deprive you of the opportunity to do so; inclusion begets positive shopping karma. On that note, let’s talk about Green Village Junk Shop.

There’s two apparel options at Green Village: Priced per piece and priced per pound ($2.00 per lb). The per-pound option has one small catch: You gotta buy ten pounds or more to get the deal. Ten pounds of clothing might sound like a lot, but believe you me, it adds up fast. The back bins at Green Village aren’t just a more manageable, pared-down version of those at Goodwill Outlet Center. They’re a vintage fiend’s dream: Retro fabulosity lurks beneath the donated muck. Dig hard, hunt enthusiastically, and here’s a preview of what you might find:




The thriftastic awesomeness above obvs didn’t magically reveal itself to me at the get-go; two to three hours of aerobic foraging is the standard for a haul of this caliber.

My shopping stamina mirrors that of a European tourist at Century 21 these days: I had enough energy at the end of my apparel browse to dig for accessories, which proved equally enthralling.


There was, of course, the issue of travel; first to the laundromat to sanitize, then home to my apartment. Hauling thirty pounds of stock around on foot isn’t fun by a long shot, but trying everything on when it’s still warm from the dryer sure as hell is. A warm and fuzzy end to a job well done.

Green Village, I love you. Viva la thrift.