Vintage Picking and Road Tripping with Dinerman

[Dinerman]

Some more updates from the road. As it turns out, Idaho is a hotbed of themed hotels. Couldn't pass up that up, got a pirate themed one. So far, it's been a highlight of the trip.

A lot of great neon today, no vintage clothing finds despite a hundred+ miles worth of thrift shops. We're out our turnaround point now, in Twin Falls. Unfortunately, again, the hours published on shops websites and answering machines don't match the hand-written changes in their windows. So we'll be missing a few shops, but still have a decent number to go to.

 

[p51]

Nice shots.
I have crossed this country more than a couple of times now on land, and now I'm kicking myself I've never simply stopped to look at the type of stuff you just posted. I'm always on the way to see a museum of anything RR related.

 

[Joao Encarnado]

Nice pictures. Thank you for sharing them.

 

[Dinerman]

The finds from Idaho.

 

[tropicalbob]

The pirate-themed hotel seems to have had its effect: look at that treasure trove. Five or six of those items I'd have grabbed in a heartbeat.

 

[Speakeasy]

Nice braces. There's no way I could make a business out of vintage hunting - I'd just end up keeping everything that even somewhat fit!

Fascinating journeys, though. A lot of that country brings back memories of when I was traveling the States as well.

 

[Frunobulax]

This has become one of my favorite threads!

 

[hatsRme]

This has become one of my favorite threads!

Indeed! A thread about threads...

 

[tropicalbob]

Ouch!

 

[hatsRme]

Sorry, Bob...

 

[Frunobulax]

Indeed! A thread about threads...

 

[Dinerman]

Finally got around to writing up this trip; I got sick on the drive back on Monday and she followed shortly thereafter. Refer to the pics above for illustrations of all this.

For this past weekend’s picking trip, Alex and I headed down to Idaho, leaving before dawn and taking the back roads. Our first day was spent in Idaho Falls, hunting through all the antique shops and thrift stores. When we were last in Idaho Falls, Alex bought a Pentax Spotmatic camera and upon returning to Bozeman discovered a roll of 15 year old undeveloped vacation photos from the Grand Canyon inside. She tracked down the man who sold her the camera and delivered some prints.

I got off to a pretty good start, finding some WWII shipbuilder badges right off the bat, followed up by a ’40s western shirt, WWII USN duffle and an early ’50s fedora in nearly unworn condition. When I started vintage dealing, back around 2006 at the tender age of fifteen (gosh how time flies), antique shops were chockablock with hats like that and my ceiling price was somewhere in the range of $20. I very rarely found ones at that point any more expensive than that. Ebay used to be the same way. Then the eBay market really took off, the Fedora Lounge's membership boomed and demand exploded. The supply in antique shops either dried up or mirrored the rising prices on eBay (across the board, without any understanding of sizes and models affecting the value), and I basically was priced out of the hat market. Prior to 2008, I was almost exclusively a hat dealer, only coming to the rest of the vintage clothes market when hats became too expensive and scarce for me to make a living off of them. Out here in Montana I still find 1960s western hats with some degree of regularity, but while I love them for myself, the seller’s market on them isn’t great. Finding a real vintage hat in the kind of condition and at the price I was eight years ago was really a thrill.

Idaho is the land of surviving mid-century signs. Throw a rock, you’re bound to hit some kind of beautiful signage (metaphorically). Preservation through lack of funds to update?

Theme hotels are also big in Idaho for some reason. They have different ones in at least Rexburg, Idaho Falls, Blackfoot and Pocatello. We stayed at the Black Swan Inn in Pocatello, in the pirate themed room. It was delightfully over the top, with an under the sea mural crashing through the side of the sunken “ship” (complete with curved ribs!), a stocked fish tank under the bar, a cannon as the tub faucet, jewels and booty embedded in the counter tops and swords over the door. A bit pricier than a Motel Six, but who remembers a highway motel after you’ve left it. I certainly can’t. I don’t think I stopped giggling about all the little details and wonderfully absurd conceits of the room for a solid hour. Every part of my past seven years of architectural education (I’m a grad student in Architecture on top of this vintage gig, how ’bout that?) wants to hate places like this, but god I love them so much.

Back on the road, and on to Twin Falls, then back to Pocatello. Sunday was, of course, more of a sightseeing and driving day than a thrifting day. In this part of the country, you’re lucky to find a few restaurants and gas stations open on Sundays, forget about shops. The antique shop in Twin Falls that I made some big finds at on my last trip, back in May, had a hand-written sign in the window that they recently stopped being open Mondays, and the Salvation Army, who we called beforehand, was also closed, and the Goodwill no longer exists.

Deseret Industries, for those of you who don’t have them in your area, are organized by color, which appeals to the obsessive in me, but makes digging through everything time consuming and annoying. All the DI’s had almost exclusively suits and jackets made within the past 10 years and mysteriously absolutely no men’s outerwear. As they’re a chain, along the lines of Goodwill, each location is set up in exactly the same way inside and I have to say it was disconcerting going into a couple of them in a row, separated by hours of driving. Like walking through a door into the room you just came from.

Still,not a bad haul despite the picking stalling for the second two days. We have a trip planned for Wyoming next week, but it's supposed to get down to sixteen degrees here in less than a week, so this may be our last big trip before snow makes this kind of long-haul Rocky Mountain driving either dangerous or our return unpredictable. If that's the case, then it's onto the much less exciting business of digging through years worth of inventory and trying to make space.

 

[mikespens]

This is a great thread Spencer, I've been lurking from the beginning and enjoying it all along. This is what the Lounge is all about in a nutshell despite all the changes to it as it gets older too. Thanks for sharing your passion with us to enjoy vicariously.

 

[Matt Crunk]

My big questions is where do you find "deals" on such great vintage clothing, especially seemingly so much at once. I go to thrift and junk stores just about everywhere I travel, and it's very rare I find anything older than the 60s or 70s, and even when I do, they always want a mint for it.

 

[Dinerman]

I don't have any real secret spots- no backrooms filled with cheap vintage at an undisclosed location. I think a lot of my luck has to do with location, many of the towns out here boomed in the 1920s and started to die by the 1960s. Mining and farming have never been hugely profitable and we're far enough away from places were fashion is a huge concern, so I get the feeling people wore things much longer than they would have on either coast (I find things in pockets of '40s suits from the '80s, for example). It's sort of like how you still see older people out here regularly driving beat to death cars from the '60s and '70s that they've clearly owned since new.
The market for vintage clothes out here is weak, and I don't get the sense it has ever been particularly strong. The vintage stores I've had good luck out in this area have all been in business for decades and from talking to the owners, have generally stopped actively going out on the road looking for finds, either having things brought to them on the strength of their reputation, or their stock having been found years ago and being brought out bit by bit. When my dad was a long haired hippie in the 1970s in Washington DC, he and his group of friends were avid thrifters, looking for '30s vests and hats. Then the '90s swing fad and other various revivals. None of that hit out here, so things have survived that otherwise would have been worn out by second or third owners years ago.
Then there's the sheer number of places I hit. It may look like a lot when it's all laid out, but when you figure it's from 15 or 20 different stores over the course of hundreds of miles of driving, it becomes a lot about playing the odds. I strike out. A lot. Good picking or not, the more places you hit, the more likely you are to find something good. One of the issues I have is antique shops have a long "restock" period. Once I visit the shops in an area, it can take a long time for them to get the kind of thing I like again. That pushes me further and further away from home with each trip, which increases my expenses (gas, food, lodging, time) and makes the trip riskier.

 

[Dinerman]

I went to the Bozeman Antique Fair at the local fairgrounds yesterday and today. The haul- a '40s hunting jacket, a '50s surcoat and a fob/medallion with a photo of a lumber mill on it. There was a decent bit of vintage clothing there, and a lot of familiar faces and items; antique shops and vendors from around the area bringing their best goods. There were an enormous amount of watch fobs and of early 20th century Indian handcrafts and to a lesser extent industrial and farm pieces. It was also nice to see, going back for the second day, that some of the vendors had brought out different stock for the different days. There were a few pieces I regret not having picked up- a pair of Mountie boots, a '30s studded jeweled belt, a pair of '30s buckle top field boots, the spade sole captoe boots below and a couple of derbies. But unless things fit me or I can safely turn a profit on them, I can't take them home with me.
I had a bit of a surprising run-in, one of the vendors came up to me and introduced herself with, "oh, you must be Spencer". I'm not sure whether to be flattered or to feel like my cover's been blown. For so many years I've tried to keep a low profile with my buying, preferring to maintain the illusion that the things I sell magically appeared. I always feel weird buying with intent to sell from vintage shops and antique dealers who are in the same line of interest. Feels like I'm trying to muscle in on someone's side of the street. Maybe it's lingering feelings from having been the kid, the student, in this world for so long that I'm still not entirely comfortable making the transition to being known and of being the one with the knowledge. I also spotted a well-dressed local fixture who some of my friends joke is what I'll look like in 30 years. He always sports a tweed jacket and an open crown turn of the century style cowboy hat, very dapper. Not quite as doppelganger-y as the time I ran into someone wearing my exact outfit of tall Bean boots, chambray shirt and multi-stripe 1930s Hudson's Bay Blanket coat here in town, but still always a pleasure to see folks around with the same obscure sense of style.

 

[PeterB]

Great thread, giving us social history. Those pictures of the signs on the top of the page bring back memories of western Canada in the 60s and 70s. Most of the designs were the same as what Dinerman shows, and haven't seen such things for decades. Thanks.

 

[cookie]

Those tan roper boots are nice

 

[Bolero]

The Road Signage Reminds me of Route 66 in the 1960's...

 

[Dinerman]

Those tan roper boots are nice

I wish I had been able to afford them. Perforated cap toe, spade sole and a practically unworn looking heel. 1930s?

Took a little trip yesterday to check out some Detroit riprap. They used to push junked cars down embankments as erosion control. Still a few around.