Following up on our last post, on thrifting blogs, these items:

How I Paid My Rent For 6 Months By Thrifting (Things I Found at the Thrift Store)

Let me first start by saying that having to make rent this way was in no way fun or recommended. Unless you’re retired or insanely dedicated to it. Paying my rent for 6 months via scraping by on reselling thrifted goods was a ton of work. I was able to utilize my in-depth knowledge of web-selling platforms to more easily liquidate most of the items. I was able to achieve this feat mainly by selling just a few items each month that made up most of my then $800 a month rent. On a soapbox-rant side note: let me say that when congress or some rogue old senator (who you know doesn’t even use the web) dabbles with the idea of taxing people’s income from selling items on sites like eBay and Etsy, it makes me seriously cringe. Some folks do this for a living and it’s grueling. An extremely slim percentage of the web sellers are making good coin from doing it. Like I said above, reselling items for a living is not what I’d call fun.

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From Wikipedia:

“Thrifting refers to the act of shopping at a thrift store, flea market, garage sale, or a shop of a charitable organization, usually with the intent of finding interesting items at a cheap price…

Thrifting lures a variety of different audiences. Two most commonly come to mind: 1) People who have no economic choice but to buy secondhand, 2) Bargain or treasure hunters. There is an emerging third audience and chances are it far outnumbers the first two. Simply put, this is an audience of smart shoppers comprised largely of families with a stay at home parent and young professionals. Their reasons for thrifting are a combination of the first two. Overall, these three groups thrift to save money because they have to or want to.”

Thrifting’s especially helpful if you’ve got the itch for kitsch. Examples below. The images of coveted and/or purchased items were culled from the following blogs:

• Thriftaholic:A Tale of Two Addicts
• Secondhand Nation
• Manic Thrift Store Shopper
• Dime Store Thrift
• Things I Found (at the Thrift Store)

There are a lot of thrifting sites out there if you’re looking for more inspiration. To spend your whole day looking at fabulous junk, check out the blog rolls on the above sites.

David Gillette, creator of IllustratedEssays, has a new one out about the disappointing Copenhagen climate change talks.

If you missed last month’s Gillette/Robert Reich essay on EconomyStory called “Why the Recovery is Happening Without Us,” here it is again:

As described in our last post, the retailer H&M is suffering a public relations nightmare stemming from a New York grad student’s noticing on the street hundreds of unsold garments that it destroyed. Twitter, Facebook, and the blogs are all ablaze in condemning H&M for not donating the clothes to charity.

The H&M Facebook page is especially interesting, with quite a war of words going on between the pro and anti-H&M factions. (The store has a startling 1.5 million Facebook fans.) Numerous H&M employees are weighing in too.

Examples:

It’s hard to trust that “reevaluating what we categorize as “damaged”" doesn’t just mean, “In the future we will try not to let members of the public find all the clothes we throw out.” Former staff members from various stores across the country have confirmed it was standard to cut up and throw out garments.
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People shouldn’t be so upset before they are well informed. In the past 5 years H&M has given over $5 million to UNICEF projects and that’s just one example of what “good” they do.
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You may have heard about the big to-do going on over H&M (as well as Wal-Mart) dumping unsold clothes. A few days ago a City University of New York grad student noticed hundreds of the stores’ discarded garments and called the New York Times, which wrote up a story.

What happened next has become a familiar story in the annals of bad corporate p.r. H&M took too long to respond, and the Web went wild. A day later, H&M issued a statement. From Wallet Pop:

But that has not stopped the negative posts on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Some examples…

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In this episode of the EconomyBeat Podcast, I thought we’d take a break from the banker, broker, speculator type of con man who torpedoed the economy and focus on the much more charming street con man who provides such rich grist for our Hollywood movies.

In three-card monte, con artists use swift hand moves and constant patter to convince a sucker there’s a way to win. Producer Sally Herships talks with a magician, a theater professor, and a real-life grifter and each describe how the monte isn’t just a crime; it’s street theater designed to keep its losers entertained.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 9:09 — 6.4MB)

Do you have a piece you think should be considered for the EconomyBeat Podcast? Put it on PRX, and add the tag ‘ebpodcast’.

Click on an image to see it full size.

More photos here.

Just saw this item. Saddled with debt, the legendary New York restaurant Tavern on the Green, located in Central Park, had its last seating on New Year’s Eve.

The web site is still functioning, however, as are the memories of people who ate there, snapped photos available on Flickr or shot video available on YouTube.

Tavern items will be auctioned off next week.

Times being what they are, a lot of people have been lurking in the “Free Stuff” section on Craigslist, hoping to spend no more than some time and sweat — you almost always have to pick up the stuff and haul it away. So it’s the proverbial “win-win situation”: You get a freebie, the posters gets rid of unwanted stuff without having to schlep it to the dump.

Still, some people in Craigslist Free Stuff have been — as the British say — “taking the piss.” That is, in hopes of getting the junk off their property, they post items that only the truly desperate would want. Of course, these are desperate times, so it may be hard to distinguish any more between what may be valued and what’s completely useless to anyone.

The blog Item Not as Described, however, tries to do just that. The site features various postings of items offered for free on the Web, sent in by readers. From the About section:

Some examples:

Wicker furniture

Ad:
“The rocking chair and settee are very very old.”

Blog description:
Very, very old. Like, Civil War old. In fact, I’m pretty sure this furniture fought in the Civil War. I don’t know where that hole could have come from other than the Battle of Gettysburg.

Homemade motorcycle

Ad:
I have a homemade bike me and my brother built many years ago. Runs and drives but the back tire kind of rides sideways. The seat blew out a few years ago and I made do with a sofa cushion, duct tape and a couple of 2x 4’s ( the ultimate fix! ). It runs like a champ but does smoke alot especially if you are hard on the gas. Uses about a quart of oil for each gas fillup. I usually just put the oil directly in the gas as it is going to burn it anyway and that way it is easy. Can’t drive over 12 miles or so at a time as the motor gets red hot and starts loosing power so probably a good bike for someone who drives locally. Does backfire and squeel pretty loud occasionally so I usually wear earplugs of some kind. DOES NOT pass emissions so would need to be registered in a county without emissions check. Great first bike otherwise!

Blog description:
It’s the new Death Wish 1200, just in time for the 2010 model year. Illegal here in the U.S. (we’re kind of safety-crazed), but popular in Kyrgyzstan, where the “Mad Max” movies are considered reality programming. Comes with a replica of the outfit worn by Mel Gibson in “Beyond Thunderdome.” Tina Turner’s outfit is available as an option.

Old freezer

Ad:
I was visiting my grandfather and he wanted to get rid of this old freezer. He used it for deer. He said it was working last time he used it, but he has since cut the chord. It is very heavy.

Blog description:
If you want your item to go from ugly to menacing, we have a pro-tip for you that this guy already knows – night photography. It makes anything scary. Anything:

See? It’s a playhouse. One that looks like it’s inhabited by a play Blair Witch.

And on it goes. Other free items pictured on the site: broken concrete, a wood shed, and a casket. Well, that last one will actually set you back $1500. Hopefully it isn’t used.

Seen the movie Up in the Air? It’s about a guy (if you can call George Clooney just a “guy”) who works for a company that hires out its professional downsizers to firms who are conducting layoffs. These axe pros then give the workers the bad news, absorbing for the bosses their angry, bitter, and panicked reactions. Interviews with real laid-off employees are interspersed throughout.

Critics are touting the film as Oscar material. But what do audiences and non-professional reviewers think? We looked at Yahoo! Movies and Rotten Tomatoes. A solid majority of viewers liked the movie (myself included), but some of the most interesting assessments are negative, so those are probably over-represented here.

Antagony & Ecstasy

(H)ere is at least part of the problem: it is such breezy fun that it becomes apparent that the filmmakers had absolutely no idea that they were telling a story which pisses right in the eye of the huge proportion of the American workforce that is currently unemployed. Maybe I’m just extra-sensitive, being part of that number. We’re going to call that my full disclosure for the review.

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