Thisolthing’s Weblog

Here are some pics of my vintage collection at Purple Armchair. Nothing is over $50.00, and most items are in the $20s and $30s. The hangers are Mod-Podged with 1940s LIFE words and images. There have been some requests to buy these, and I may in the future but I have a few hangups about it (no pun intended). First, I’m not sure my “art” is actually good enough to sell, but at the same time, it would be difficult and weird to part with it!

Just got back from the beach last night. Downtown Wilmington, NC has some very stylish spots. Edge of Urge, for example, is a really well-stocked boutique (even though the shopkeeper refused to let me use a sink after I’d liberally applied what turned out to be Eau de Bacon — Demeter’s Bonfire). 008 on Market Street is another store with equally desirable inventory. Pravda, a “Soviet-style vodka bar,” and its sister spot Odessa look like they would stand out in New York- or at least hang with. Charley Brownz, Cafe Phoenix, Deluxe, YoSake with its anime-clad walls — good design and originality abound all along Front Street and its adjoining blocks.

But here’s the catch– none of that stylishness and edge has rubbed off on the town’s inhabitants. Granted, in the summer season much of the downtown crowd is bound to be tourists, and the university is obviously not in session, but M and I were appalled by the absence of a single person whose personal style did justice to the look and feel of the places we went. The unofficial Wilmington uniform is solid-color cotton and khaki. Not a soul seemed to dare to be different, and it’s not for lack of trying that we didn’t really meet anybody interesting.

Maybe it’s because of a lack of good vintage? We stopped in at Flashbax, a vintage store I had remembered from my last trip to Wilmington. This was before I really got into buying and selling it– I must not have known much about appropriate pricing, because even though I remembered it was slightly on the pricier side, I didn’t register that the prices are downright exorbitant! M picked up a, yes, very cute, cotton tank sundress from the 1970s in a yes, very pretty, browns-and-oranges pattern. I’m thinking $25, $30, $40 absolute maximum. The damn thing was $79.00! And that’s not a fluke for that store.

See for yourself

As you may be able to tell from my recent posts, I have been feeling rather cranky recently. I don’t want to come off as too crabby, so I thought I should post something light-hearted.

I had this gmail chat with my sister Kate. It made me smile:

kate: i has a headache

These are her cats, one is named Prickle Socks (for her white feet and the way her paws prickle on the carpet) and the other, Balthazar. She is obsessed with them. I hate cats but they illustrate the story nicely. Also, I told her that should could send me one or none and that I was not to receive the whole album, or I would not even post one. She sent two. But since the point of this post is to dispel any impression of myself as unpleasant, I will begrudgingly post them both.

Coldplay is actually one of the only big mainstream bands that I can genuinely say I knew before they were famous, back when MTV2 played 24 hours of music video and ‘Yellow’ was on it, sandy and unknown.

I guess now their new track is actually called Viva La Vida (wtf!). This piece of biting wisdom from Pitchfork reviewer Ryan Dombal:

“There’s a thin line between lyrics that speak to everyone and lyrics that suck-up to everyone.”

I’m inserting this photo for Kim Weiss at Blueplate PR (www.blueplatepr.com), in the hopes that she may recognize me when we meet at Helios on Thursday to talk about my vintage collection at Purple Armchair.

I’ll be putting up photos on Thursday (hopefully) of my section of the store and the items in it.

For the uninitiated, Purple Armchair is the mixed retail marketplace on West Street here in Raleigh where I’ve started selling hand-picked dresses from the 40s to the 80s (hence the title of this blog). Recently, I have begun to slowly introduce some guys’ stuff as well, and, depending my rate of success at that, I will continue and expand.

I’ve got quite a few fun things going on this week, actually. Having lunch with Melissa at Dos Taquitos tomorrow, and in the evening I’m being interviewed for an evening German teaching position with a local translation and foreign language instruction company. Not that I don’t already have enough work to do. But this new job is meant to be: I had been teaching English to a Russian vaccinologist named Boris over at Duke, and had just begun that when I got the call about teaching German and had to decline. In a odd, I-think-not coincidence, the M*******vs (the Russian family- hey, you never know how comfortable those Russians would be about me revealing their identity ) left the country *yesterday,* and *yesterday* the woman called again with an interview offer.

Right now, I’ve got Deutsche Welle TV on in the background to de-rust for tomorrow’s interview, and I have to say, it makes my heart sing to hear and understand a different language, and I look very much forward to getting back to that part of my life and my brain after the grant for my current job runs out in February.

Then, Thursday I’m having dinner with my new friend Amy. Check out her *ridiculous* cakes here: http://picasaweb.google.com/a2richster.

This is my first blog post ever. I am setting this up as a way of tracking and organizing my multiple projects. I want to be creative in the look of things, but I am already really frustrated because it’s a huge ordeal just to change the font- and there are only about ten to choose from anyway ;(