Cheap Jacks

[alanfgag]

Just returned from a few days in NYC with my daughter. Frigid day in the city so we stopped and shopped every hundred yards to warm up. One stop was Cheap Jacks on Broadway. I remember the store from my high school days - it was on Canal Street then I think.

They have hundreds and hundreds of hats - smashed together on shelves. The ribbons are mostly destroyed from being stored this way, but once you get past the idea that you might actually find something to buy, it's fun to look and handle the hats in person. Most were priced at $120... I found one very nice quality Imperial Stetson at $320. I left feeling a lot better about the values I've been finding on ebay!

What vintage shops do you forage?

 

[zetwal]

We sure don't have anything like that around here. Stacks and stacks of vintage hats isn't something I come across. I wish we did. I certainly would enjoy foraging in a place like that.

 

[Aureliano]

I've been there a few times. Not great hats and both, bad and good, are priced excesively high. Being on 5th ave... (they're actually right across from JJ hat centre)

 

[dhermann1]

My experience with Cheap Jack's has been, on the whole, overwhelmingly negative. When I first started going there, over 20 years ago, they had a good amount of stuff. But I soon found racks and racks of good vintage suits that had been chopped up and ruined. They somehow got it in their heads that putting knit cuffs on dress jackets AND trousers was cool. Utterly tragic and maddening. It doesn't surprise me that they would store things in a way that would damage them.

 

[flat-top]

Cheap Jack's brother, Andy Cheapee is also notorious for abusing great stuff and charging obscene prices. I haven't been to either store in a few years, but it sounds like nothing has changed!

 

[alanfgag]

I've been there a few times. Not great hats and both, bad and good, are priced excesively high. Being on 5th ave... (they're actually right across from JJ hat centre)

That was Fifth - thanks for the correction... and I missed JJ hat centre completely (or my daughter had me facing the other way on purpose!)
I remember buying leather jackets there in the late 1960s... but I think things might have gone a little out of control when Cyndi Lauper started getting her wardrobe there. They have lasted a long time.