Two Things
New old stuff, vintage pizza apparel
Welcome to my occasional, when-I-feel-like-it bonus content about secondhand shopping and selling, minor fascinations, passing fancies, and old stuff! This is the same subscription as Just Some Lady and you are (obviously!) free to skip it.
Last week I met a friend for lunch and some vintage shopping. The shop we intended to explore ended up being not so much a vintage store as a witchy (complimentary) little goth boutique with a few racks of secondhand stuff, i.e. not really my style but cute nonetheless.
This shop is in the town where I grew up, and as we walked back to our cars, I noticed that the little vintage store where I spent many an hour in high school and on breaks from college is still open. I hadn’t thought about this shop in years and assumed it was long gone, but no, it is still there, still with the same woman behind the counter, still wearing a version of the same outfit and little straw hat.
My friends and I used to go to this store to shop for jewelry to wear with our homecoming dresses and clothes to wear in theater productions. In the early 90s, I bought a three-strand faux pearl necklace there that is probably from the 1940s or 1950s; I still have it but would be afraid to wear it now, given its age (and the fact that I’m not really a pearl person). I wore that necklace on a double date to a school dance, and before the dance, we all went to a French restaurant that, in retrospect, was much too nice for a bunch of high school kids. When the chef came to our table and very Frenchly asked my date “How does it feel to be dining with two angels?” my date said, “uh…I don’t know.”
The other thing I have a very clear memory of buying at this shop is a 1960s faux-leopard coat that I wore with complete seriousness a number of times throughout my 20s and 30s. I think it is time to bring this coat back, actually. It was about $50 when I bought it thirty years ago, a fortune to me at the time, and I remember pawing it at the store several times before actually buying it. (Earlier this week, I got this coat out of storage to try it on and found a lighter in the pocket. So, it’s been a long time since I wore it.)
Anyway, walking into that store was like doing an 8-ball of premium-grade nostalgia. The classic vintage-store smell alone was enough to send me shooting into the stratosphere, but it looks exactly the same, right down to the vintage hat boxes stacked to the ceiling, the yards of costume jewelry draped over every conceivable surface, and the racks stuffed with treasure, leaving barely enough space to move around. There are even still vintage faux-leopard coats on offer, though they are from the 1990s now.
I picked through the stack of old linens and found a hand-embroidered tablecloth for our patio table. I rationalized this purchase as saving it from a tradwife Instagrammer who would otherwise turn it into a fucking romper. I also took a spin through the clothing racks, not really expecting to find anything, but ended up with this 80s-does-50s cotton dress:
It for sure needs a belt. It came with the original belt, but a previous owner “customized” it for their extremely tiny waist, and while it technically fits, it’s a) pretty uncomfortable and b) way too exaggerated. I have a few belts lying around, but I tried and rejected a black one (too bumblebee-coded), a red one (too Ronald McDonald), and a dark brown leather one (too menswear) before finding a woven raffia belt on eBay. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
As a bonus, and in the spirit of last week’s letter, I rediscovered the cork sandals I’m wearing in the picture, which won out over an old pair of Clarks that looked too costumey and some kinda-dated Target sandals that I only wore once because they gave me blisters. (I should probably pass those on.)
The fun thing I trawled eBay for last week was old pizza shop t-shirts. Pizza shop t-shirts are kind of tough because they tend to have a lot of stains, one assumes due to the pizza. Nevertheless, here is my favorite:
This one is really so good if you’re a fan of ringer t-shirts:
Next up, IYKYK:
Finally, we have this entry from Carmen’s Pizza in New Jersey. This one is notable for the saying on the front, which…what?
I’m not sure I really need a pizza shop t-shirt right at the moment, but I’m not ruling it out in the future. Weird t-shirts are an underrated way to strike up conversations with strangers, something I discovered recently at dog daycare drop-off when a woman approached me because of my Langston High t-shirt. She was very nice, even after she realized Langston High is different than her alma mater, Langston Middle. I broke the news that I was not a fellow alumnus and we had a nice little chat about our dogs instead.
Imagine running into THE Jerry of Jerry’s Pizza!
Sometimes Reddit serves me posts from the Goodwill bins subreddit and I have come to understand that a lot of these weird vintage tees are sourced from there. It is usually not some former employee of Pagliai’s who is finally parting with their beloved souvenir. This is the kind of thing that I love about secondhand stuff, it just travels around until it ends up in my closet, living a whole entire different life.
Though if you have a vintage pizza shop t-shirt hanging around your house, you should definitely just sell it for $30 and eliminate the middleman. (Follow me for more business advice.)