The less virtual Craigslist

The thing I like about thrift stores, used book stores, Craigslist is that each object has a history besides the one you are about to create with it, a history outside of the factory. Someone, at some point, decided to buy it or invest in a hobby or give it to someone they thought would appreciate it. There is a conscious decision "YES," and there is just as a conscious a decision when they say "NO," I'll give this away now.

McKay's: the ultimate used book/CD/DVD/software store. I bring visitors there because I think it's a destination. There's always something for everyone, and a lot of it.

I've never really had somebody comment on my (potential/actual) purchases before. Not even the cashiers. I guess even at a used book store the drugstore/grocery store rule applies. I mean, self-check out is popular for a reason.

Joanne and I took our cousin Jasmine (she's visiting for the week) to McKay's after going on a tour of Bull Run (first time for all of us). I pointed Jasmine to the manga/anime/graphic novel section which was about 2-3 whole shelves-worth of material (she'd asked if I read manga, or if there was manga at my school library--apparently it's abundant at Norview HS). I bee-lined it to the DVD sets to check if My So-Called Life or Freaks and Geeks were on the shelves again (they weren't; things like that always appear when you're not looking for them).

The Little People, Big World set was still there. Grey's Anatomy. Dexter. New on the shelves was Breaking Bad: Seasons 1-3. I picked up the first season, $15. A classic horror movie (with directors and actors you hear about but never actually watch) set was only $4. I thought of Staci's November birthday and got it.

Right next to the DVD sets are the foreign language DVDs, and a cover of one particular DVD caught my eye. Joanne voiced what I was thinking: it was the same cover design of the Criterion Collection edition of Au Revoir Les Enfants. I did a paper on Au Revoir Les Enfants a couple of semesters ago for an IR through Film class. This one was called Lucien, Lacombe.

"It's good." I heard someone say somewhere behind me.

I wasn't planning to turn around. But then nobody had replied to the man's comment. So I turned around, waiting for someone to say something back.

A young-ish dude, he was talking to me and Joanne. Woops. 20-something, post-grad probably. Non-descript but good-looking with a green tee and neat blonde stubble.

I was instantly flattered, and then immediately a little embarrassed for the Relay for Life T-shirt, baggy light blue knee-length board shorts, and zip-up black boots I was wearing with my hair tied up because my neck was hot.

I asked if he'd seen Au Revoir, Les Enfants. A test, I guess you could say. And then he shot back with a whole mumbo jumbo which was a spot-on, almost academic or critic's description of Louis Malle's directorial style. WTF?!

Okay, mister, if you know Louis Malle so well, "Which one's better?"

"Well, they're just... different." A pretentious answer. A very critical answer. But not a sure answer.

"Huh."

I went back to sizing up whether or not $15 was worth getting this DVD. Joanne said it wasn't. Then she walked away, saying she was going to find Jasmine in the graphic novel section. She left me alone!

And I thought I was done. I was going to spend a couple more seconds deciding and digesting and then the guy (with my BACK to him) says if I like that kind of stuff, I might like this Finnish movie he just picks up from the section he's standing at. The comedy section? A movie in Finnish isn't in the foreign language section but in the regular comedy section? Inconceivable.

"Cool. Huh."

He puts it back but the Finnish and the fact that this guy keeps going makes me pick it up to consider it again. It was nominated for an Oscar.

I escaped back with my handful of DVDs and retreat to the manga/anime/graphic novel section.

I ended up buying everything (including the Finnish comedy) except for Breaking Bad, which I figured I could find easily enough online or borrow from Staci.

Later on in the car, Joanne says something about why people are put off by pretentiousness. And how it's just everyday practice in intellect, ambition, curiosity, courage, in a way, to not hide capabilities. I wasn't entirely convinced (I'm one of those who are put off by it, but I may practice it). We did agree, however, that this man was some kind of plant, a business idea implemented by the crafty geniuses behind the desks of McKay's. "Green Day's not real punk rock," Joanne suggests. "Try this." Haha!

Thinking about it more, well, 2 things. First, I'm more embarrrassed in retrospect because this guy was probably just trying to nudge his way to the foreign film section (and the Finnish comedy was as far as he could get). And 2) I wonder if Lacombe, Lucien was his?

Anyway in the span of writing this entry it has actually become more explicitly about Craigslist I'd planned: I've posted my first Craigslist ad, ever. It's in Missed Connections.

In the market

I'm currently in the market for some lightly used rollerblades with secure fasteners (laces and buckles).

Joanne and I have been rollerblading since we were little, but since we outgrew our latest pair from Kid's World, we started sharing our Dad's from time to time. They were a little bit on the big side and the shifting inside the boot strained our feet, but if you strapped in really tight, they were usable even for 10-year-old feet.

They came out for the first time a several years a few weeks ago when I decided to take up skateboarding again. Joanne wanted to learn, so I let her use mine while I used our old friend's brother's board that came to us like 15 years ago.

We were all set, or thought we were, until the old board literally started to fall apart with me just standing on it over the carpet in our house. The rubber keeping the trucks secure onto the deck was cracking away on one side. And then the other side. And then both trucks on the deck were completely unsupported. Useless.

So as an alternative, we broke out the blades.

They worked for a while. But then my ankles started to hurt. And then I couldn't strap in securely because the rods of the fasteners were nudging themselves out of their hinge with every stride.

(Women's) Size 8 rollerblades, seeking

Patti was the first person who actively responded to my inquiries about the listed rollerblades. She had a Size 7 men's which could translate well into a size 8, 8.5 women's. One of the other rollerblade Craigslisters noted (generously) that you should always go a size up rather than size down.

Most Craigslisters, at least from my rare experience, are fine with email and text. But this woman who was trying to sell her men's blades was insistent on the phone. I emailed inquiries a couple days before leaving for Chicago, and she called me at least once every day in between that and actually leaving for Chicago. She left me voicemails and even apologized for having missed my call (what, me, making the first phone call? Don't think so). She called me the morning of our departure, saying that she would bring the blades with her to the daycare she worked at so that I could possibly pick them up before our 1:30 call time. Wow, thank you lady, but really, you shouldn't have. I emailed her, of course, telling her not to go through the trouble (I know I should have called). A few days later I got an email in my inbox saying that sure! she'll hold the blades until I got back!

I guess she really wanted to get rid of them.

I think she's since lost her patience with me, this go-getter, on-the-run middle-aged mom-type since I've come back to Chicago. Her emails are less excited and I haven't checked my phone but I'm pretty sure she didn't call me this time. She's definitely trying to convey in her emails that she doesn't go online often. I hope I've conveyed that I don't do phones often. I wish we could meet halfway, via text.

So now I'm set for her $25 blades and either $20 women's blades from somebody in North Arlington or $25 blades from somebody in Annandale, whoever contacts me first. Joanne hasn't expressed a desire for a new pair of rollerblades, but I don't want to go skating around town alone.

My first purchase

I semi-impulsively bought peach kefir at a cheese shop in NYC. I've seen kefir other places, too, but traveling in a different city just gave me an excuse to finally try it again since the real stuff in Russia in 2009. I was worried it would be like drinking peach-flavored buttermilk, but actually, it was like having a tangy, drinkable peach yogurt. I was hooked to the taste, to the protein content, the probiotics.

Researching it online when I got back home from NYC, I learned that you could make your own kefir using kefir culture in regular milk. It also multiplies, and although you could pay for a pack of dehydrated culture or buy it off the "kefir lady" online and get it delivered padded in a small jar of milk, many kefir culturers end up sharing their overgrown kefir grains, for free.

So I joined neighborhood sharing sites that I'd read about in Time magazine: SnapGoods and NeighborGoods. However, the sites were confusing and my local network was basically unpopulated. So, of course, back to Craigslist.

Kefir grains from the soccer mom, purchased for $5

Craigslist DC, to my surprise, had the cheapest and most abundant kefir grains even compared to hipster Richmond, hippie Charlottesville, and homemade Williamsburg.

The $5 kefir grains was categorized under "health/beauty products," was sparsely in lowercase, and the location was "gmu," George Mason University.

If you go on Youtube and search how to make kefir, most of what you'll get is some young adult or middle-aged man straining kefir from a plastic jug. They have a medium or muscly build, because it's likely they're athletes drinking kefir like a daily protein shake.

So of course I imagined some tall basketball player coming out of his Mason dorm wearing socks and adidas flipflops, scooping out some of his kefir grains straight from his bottle of prepared kefir. The texts he sent were short and to the point, some words shortened like kids tend to do these days (and my parents, I should have thought) and he never tried to call me. The meeting place was outside of McDonalds at University Mall; who else but an unsupervised college youth would make McDonalds right outside of a college campus a meeting place?

Well, a soccer mom who takes her kids to McDonalds for fries or a sundae after an exhausted Saturday's game and is worried about strangers coming to her children's house, that's who.

We pulled into the driveway in front of McDonalds at the same time. She was a "cool mom" with Rivers Cuomo glasses and I could have sworn her daughter was wearing a soccer uniform coming out of the passenger seat. Although I'd come prepared with my jar of milk that the basketball player could just spoon the kefir grains into, she'd come more prepared: I had a good half cup of the stuff, chilled in a glass jar and banded with foil.

I was pleasantly surprised and grateful! After effusive thanks (returned with a observant, neutral gaze) I sheepishly handed the woman my $5 payment, feeling really, really stupid and juvenile: the payment was $5 in dimes, sealed in a plastic ziplock sandwich bag. "...You can count it, if you want..."

Craigslist, documented

So I've decided to document all my Craigslist transactions.

Craigslist tests my social anxiety (I have to pick up the phone?!) and paranoia (are they going to mug me?! tie me up and throw me in their trunk?!) but also feeds my addiction to bargain-hunting and thrifting. Only in my post-grad life would I have the time to actually leaf through racks and webpages to find buried, cheap treasure.

I was off of it for a good couple years: either I was too busy to be browsing, or I got the idea that Craigslist was too seedy an operation, or both. The last memorable transaction outside this summer was in 2008, when I started interning at International Action. I ended up interning there for 2 summers; it profoundly changed the way I thought about my education (and my career outlook); I made some great friends; and I still try to keep in touch with the staff there. That should have been testimony enough, right?

I wouldn't have went through the Craigslist gateway, if it wasn't for my friend asking for a favor...

The green couch-y chaise with cat hair all over it, picked up for friend

It was a pick-up for a friend who'd just moved into a new place and was looking for a chaise for her reading corner. My sister and I had the large vehicle and the time, so we agreed to pick it up. In retrospect, I don't know why I wasn't more apprehensive about picking it up... we just printed out directions to some random house in Herndon and were on our way, without thinking about what kind of neighborhood we were going to or if we'd have to go inside the house. (Now, I always try to have a non-residential pick-up location).

The woman (Kate?) sounded pretty harmless on the phone. Forgetting the $50 we were supposed to bring to pay her, I asked her where the nearest bank or ATM was. She had to ask her male companion for directions. I imagined her to be a 20-something living with her husband or boyfriend in a small townhouse or apartment.

We drove up to a humble single-family home, and in the doorway was framed a plump, middle-aged mom and her fit husband picking up their daughter to get out of the way, a curious cat in the background. This is how you disarm yourself to buyers, Joanne noted. Family. Young children. Noted. I noticed little sneakers in the hallway so it didn't seem like the kid was there slap-dash against her will. I told this to myself when the man told me that the chaise was downstairs in the basement.

When we were in the basement, he pointed to the small, seemingly empty laundry room and told us it was "in there," without actually going "in there" himself. I braced myself with an over-chipper optimism, hoping there wasn't some cage in there and that he wasn't going to slam the door and lock us in.

No worries--the chaise was there. It was about three times bigger and poofier than I thought it would be and was a pain to get through the door and the stairs up to the front door. I remember hugging the chaise and thinking I was doing most of the work: the man looked like he was really exerting himself to help us out, which surprised me, well, because I'm a girl? Stereotypes.

It wasn't until about 10 minutes later that I realized my neck and the side of my face was red and itchy. Effing. Cat. Hair. I was furious. For the drop-off I made Joanne move the bulk of the thing, I was so irritated.

A warning would have been nice, Craigslister. And a $5 tip for having to haul the cat-hairy thing out of the basement.