Trash and Treasure: Los Angeles Bargain Shopping!

My favorite vintage clothing store, Sunday mornings at Jet Rag is like a religious experience. You know, without all of the associated guilt and you know… religious peasantry. At 9AM they gate off the parking lot and dump all of their leftover clothing haphazardly out on the concrete. Every article of clothing is $1, and if you’re willing to jostle and bump up against a huge crowd of hipsters you are going to find some great finds. It’s probably a good thing that hipsters are generally pretty peaceful or I feel that it could get real ugly real quick.

The yin to Jet Rag’s yang, I tend to shop here quite infrequently because the prices are quite high for vintage shop fare. However, they have a great policy where they buy clothing and give you store credit or cash money depending on the style, brand and condition of said clothing. I figure for every $20 I spend at Jet Rag’s Sunday Sale, I make about triple that selling it back to Buffalo Exchange… which in turn sells it back to clueless consumers for another 3 – 400% markup. It’s like the budget deficit, it doesn’t make any fiscal sense, but it works.

One of the biggest flea markets with over 20,000 buyers at a time, they open their doors the second Sunday of every month. I usually buy jeans or crafts there for my girlfriends jewelry making hobby… others go there to make contacts and score illegal narcotics. Fun for the whole family!

Apparently the owner of the Melrose Trading Post has a business where he just approaches the owners of lots that are empty on Sunday mornings and suggests a flea market in that space and time. Seems like business is booming as this market specializes in rare books, handmade greeting cards and general snooty behavior from the participants.

I’ve been told good things by people. I heard tings, I heard tings!

It’s a little surreal to see a Farmers Market in the middle of Downtown LA, but after witnessing assorted bum fights, public urination and the general apathy of the LAPD in that particular area, I figure anything goes. Why not delicious produce?

Because even the farmers in Hollywood are rich, obnoxious and snooty. Shrug It’s LA, baby.

The red-haired step child of Los Angeles farmers markets… even guidespot’s business finder misspelled Pasadena. sigh Great market and the vendors here are amazingly nice, even when I totally take advantage of the laws of supply and demand. Blame it on John Maynard Keynes!