The rest of the Chicago thrifting

Hi guys!  Can you believe this?  Three days in a row I'm posting!  Aren't you proud?  So Wednesday I told you all about this past Saturday's tourist-thrifting in a few nifty neighborhoods around Chicago.  Last night I gave you a cheapskate's review of an adorably decorated but decidedly cheap hotel.  

Now it's time to show off Sunday's haul, for yes, the thrifting did continue!

We started our day from the cheap hotel far, far from the city, and, as breakfast was not included in our thrifty accommodations, we found this fabulous establishment:

That's right, we had Spunky Dunkers Donuts for breakfast!

We took our sugary bounty to go, found the Starbucks at the local train station, and ate at a picnic table in the little park nearby while wondering whether very small aliens created the lawn-circles there, or whether perhaps someone spilled weed killer.

After downing two donuts and an iced chai I was ready for some more exploring.  We had hoped to visit some vintage shops we had scoped out online in the Wicker Park/Bucktown/Humbolt Park neighborhoods, but every place we found was either closed on Sunday or closed this particular Sunday because of the holiday weekend.  Todd and I did press our noses longingly to the glass at An Orange Moon, but nobody materialized from the back to let us in for an exclusive peek and huge discounts like in my daydreams.  Still, so much to covet there!  And a wander around that nifty area was by no means a bust.  There were fabulous old businesses and lovely residential streets to wander:

And lo and behold, the lovely residential street depicted above sported an "estate sale" sign - bonus!  In a converted carriage house, I apparently learned the importance of coasters, for here is what I purchased:

A set of 6 vintage coasters with Parisian street scenes. 

My very own Stonesters!  Sorry about the lousy pic quality - I guess I was excited.

I posted here about a set of cut stone coasters I got my Dad for his birthday at a craft fair this summer.  These are by the same guy - they have the same sticker underneath, and are just as awesomely Andy Goldsworthy-esque as those, but I got these for about 1/5 the price - yay!

After the estate sale we felt the need to appease the youngster in the group who had very patiently wandered neighborhoods and waded through junk with us for so long, so we headed for Michigan Avenue so he could do some coveting of his own at the Apple Store.  As sleek technology is nice but not necessarily covet-worthy to me, I took that time to stop and smell the... well, not roses:

Flower beds on Michigan Ave.

I'm sure this is a famous building.  I just call it cool                                                     

More from the flower beds 

I so want to go to the Tip Top Tap!

After Michigan Avenue we went looking for the Randolph Street Market, but again struck out, either because we were thrown off by the North Coast Music Festival that kept getting in our way, or because it was closed that day, I'm not sure which.  We did, however, find a real live nitty gritty old-tools-and-cheap-sunglasses flea market:

And look - the sky was clearing up!

I didn't find any vintage treasures there, but, as the clouds all blew away and the sun came out full force, I did buy a pair of the above-mentioned cheap sunglasses, and this most excellent concoction:

Mango con chile - sooooo yum!

Later, without realizing we were doing it, we found our way to another amazing comfort food spot that's apparantly been there for over 70 years, never closes, has been featured on the Food Network, and (this part's just my own personal opinion based on the super nice people who waited on us) appears to be a really great workplace.  The White Palace Grill boasted really, really good food, even if you weren't impressed by all that other stuff.  The soup was amazing (they really like to feed you soup in Chicago, I think).

So after a relative bust in terms of thrifty finds up to that point in the day, we managed to find one of the many Unique Thrift stores in the area, where they were having an awesome sale, and where I found quite a few treasures:

A green vintage lampshade (stitchery bit needs redone, and
I should've turned the seam side around, but oh well!).

A really nice mid-century magazine rack.

An adorable matched pair of crewelwork kite-flying kids.

A cheaply made but awesomely printed vintage bedspread
that doesn't appear to have ever been used.

A small blue and red monogrammed overnight bag.

An old TOMY owl clock-toy.

A beautiful vintage tablecloth in bright autumn tones.

I think I picked up more at this one medium sized strip-mall thrift store than I bought anywhere else all weekend!  We went back to the big amazing warehouse I mentioned in Wednesday's post after that, so Todd could do some wheelie-dealing (he totally scored a Lane Acclaim coffee table for $40!), but what I picked up there I included in what I showed you from there yesterday.  So this concludes the thrift haulage from the weekend, and my energy for continued typing.  I suppose that means I'll spare you my thoughts on Ikea as an analogy for the road to hell.  You don't have to thank me!

If you haven't had enough of thrifted treasures yet, check out these link-ups full of folks who are lucky in thrift:  

Chic on a Shoestring's Flaunt it Friday and The Thrifty Groove's Thrifty Things Friday. 

And what about you?  Thrift anything good lately?

Free to a good home: a big idea!

Thrifty folks with database and coding skills, take note!  I finally came up with a really good idea that's probably worth money.  It may well already exist out there, but I haven't found it yet, and because I do not have the necessary skills, and am entirely too clueless and lazy to track down people who do and make it happen, I am offering this brilliant idea up to anybody who might be clever enough to implement it, free of charge!  How's that for a bargain?  All I ask is, if you make it happen, let me know?  I wanna see it So Bad!

 So here's the idea, somewhat inspired by sites like Pandora and Netflix and others that use algorithms to "learn" your tastes and recommend things that you would like.   But this one is for my favorite thing:  Road trips!

Essentially, you start with a map.  With sites like Netflix, the more items a user rates, the more the site learns about the user's tastes, and the better it gets at recommending content, but the actual items being rated are a part of a pre-existing database.  In this case my thought is that users create the content, to a large extent.  A basic database of obvious places would exist to start, like museums and hotels and restaurants and major tourist attractions, music venues, hiking trails, architectural marvels, amusement parks and the like.  Users would start with areas they know well and start tagging, rating and reviewing places in the various categories.  But they could also add places within categories that the system doesn't already know about, and add categories too, which would grow the database further if something they want to tag doesn't fit an existing category.  As users in various places tag their maps, the system learns about the sites they tag, growing it's knowledge base and learning what each individual user likes and why.  Then, when you're ready for a road trip, you can check your destination on the map and get suggestions not only for where you might like to stay and eat and what you might like to see and do there, but also what route would take you near other things you would enjoy along the way, complete with descriptions and reviews by people who have similar tastes to you.  And if you were feeling adventurous and didn't have a specific destination in mind, you could even ask the site to suggest, based on your tastes, a customized road trip just for you!  How brilliant is that??  Not to mention it could help you skip places that would not appeal to you, so you save some money!

I admit that I'm not sure I'd use the site, if it existed, because I like the surprise of the random road trip.  Stumbling across things I didn't know existed gives me such a rush of discovery; I'd hate to lose that.  But I could totally see myself tagging, rating and reviewing places.  It would be a fun way to commemorate your road trips and share your discoveries with other people.  And I could definitely see myself poring over far-away places that I may never get to visit, experiencing them vicariously through other people's reviews.  

Oh, and just for fun, I've got suggestions for what to name the site, because that's the only part I actually could do myself!  How about Meander?  Or Wanderlike?  Or, inspired by the late great Yogi Berra, something like this?:

Cute, right?  See a fork in da road?  Take it!

And now all I can think about is wandering off down the road to see what I can see!  Wanna go?

My good friend Hank HeadRoom (the Chevy HHR)  on my most recent wander.

Friday, The Cure style

I hope everyone's having a lovely Friday night.  I know I am!  I finished my class, and went for a wander in a different direction tonight.  Checked out another thrift store, this one on a cool little small-town-mainstreet looking drag in Brookfield.  For the first time on this trip I didn't find anything there I couldn't live without, but it was a beautiful drive, and when I came out of that shop and looked across the street I had to smile:

Wonderland Multivintage - you MUST go to their site and play with the scanner - SO cute!

I walked in the door and I have to say, there's still some truth in advertising.  It wasn't a very big shop, but it was full of wonder.  It was musty, I admit, but it was also packed to bursting with so much stuff it almost hurt to look.  When I went inside, I didn't see anyone at first, then I heard a little voice and out from behind a counter popped an adorable little girl of 4 or 5, and if that wasn't cute enough, she was followed by her even younger sister (I assume), playing among just piles of vintage toys.  You know how you see that stuff sometimes, all pristine in a shop, and it seems like a shame that they're not getting played with and loved by children?  Well this stuff is getting loved!  It may not be pristine, but it's packed with nostalgia.  I didn't stay long, but I did find a treasure!  I assume I purchased it from the girls' dad.  Its still down in the rental car, but here's what I just had to buy for $4.00, in a pic from Ebay, in case you want one too:

Rocket shaped commemorative glass. 
You can buy this one, I think I'll keep mine!

Then I wandered in a different direction because I had it in my head I wanted Chinese food, but I ended up going with my instincts and stopped to have dinner at Marquee Restaurant in Broadview.  It looks like a dump, but that kind of dump that's full of locals and has one of those pie carousels.  I had good luck at a slightly more upscale version of that kind of place earlier in the week (amazing cream of chicken soup at Mother's Day on Cermak), so I gave it a shot.  I was greeted by a very spry old gentleman who seated me with a smile.  As I settled down I heard him talking to a woman behind the counter, I'm guessing in Greek.  Then I was greeted again by a friendly waitress who seemed like she enjoyed her job, like she was among friends there and having a good time.  The menu was nearly as much of a wonderland as the shop I'd been in earlier, so I asked her what to get, and she suggested the pork chops.  It was some sort of special and it came with soup too.  This was also cream of chicken, and it wasn't quite as good as the stuff at Mother's Day, but it came with a whole  plate of little grilled ciabatta rolls, which I like better than soup anyway.  Then the pork chops came and OH MY!  They were cooked Greek-style, with olive oil and lemon juice and they were covered with what I thought for a moment were nuts, but turned out to be big crunchy chunks of roasted garlic!  So that's when I fell in love with a pork chop.  But I could only eat one of them, so the best part is, I have two more to eat tomorrow, and there's a big old piece of lemon meringue pie, too!

So what I'm trying to say is - wander often, and give a dump a chance. 

Thrifting afield

It's a pretty busy week here at the 2ndhand casa, and I'm preparing to leave Sunday for a week in Chicago for software training for work, so I have a question for anyone who might be reading:

Anyone have any thrift and/or thrifty suggestions for my down time while I'm there?

I must preface this by saying that when I say Chicago, I really mean I'll be somewhere way outside of Chicago, so instead of this:

Chicago's nifty mirror-bean!

My view will be more like this:

Random industrial park

My class is in Oak Brook, apparently across the street from a giant mall (yawn!), and my hotel is a couple of miles away in Westchester, which seems from google maps to be home to mostly golf courses and cemeteries.  I'm guessing I'm at least a 40 minute drive outside of Chicago-proper, and will be in class 9:00-5:00, so the question is what to do in the exurbs, in the January cold, after hours when it gets dark early, on my own?  I'm a wanderer by nature and very much enjoy exploring by myself, but the conditions for this one are challenging even for me.  I'm sure I'll find a thrift shop or two to check out, and drive around looking for interesting neighborhoods and whatnot, and I'll definitely venture into the city a couple of evenings but I'm sure there's plenty to do outside of the city too; I just don't know what it is!  So if anybody knows that area and has suggestions to get me started (particularly suggestions of the free-to-cheap kind), I'm all ears!

I will have the Saturday after the class free before heading back to the 'Lou, and I'm torn.  Some of the things I've thought of:

Shedd Aquarium (which I'd like to see, but is low on my list because 1. It costs money and 2. I'm not sure how much fish will hold my attention, and there's a whole world of who-knows-what around any given corner I might miss to look at fish...

Checking Craigslist for estate sales - a chance to see Chicago neighborhoods and houses I never would otherwise, and the possibility of some vintage bargains of the exotic non-St. Louis-y nature for the shop.

A proper wander in some interesting, real (as in not too touristy, not too mass-market) neighborhoods in the city.  Not sure what neighborhoods those might be yet, but that's part of the fun!

So, again - any suggestions are welcome - got some?