“We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”
― Carson McCullers
You can tell everything about a town by their second hand shops. Growing up, my great-grandmother Tooty lived in a classic old Los Angeles home in Highland Park right above Wilshire. Tooty came from a lot of money and her home was impeccably decorated and kept preserved through the 80s and 90s exactly the way it was in the 1920s. The house was a dream, everything a house from that era had: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a picturesque lawn and a driveway that went into the backyard with a two car garage that housed her 1962 Rambler. She passed away in the early 90s but my family kept her house for a little while. We would slowly go through her things, explore the rooms, look for secret passageways and hidden alcoves, play dress up in her closet. Her high heels almost fit my feet at the time as she had tiny feet and mine are on the larger side, even then, and I would walk around in her colorful high heels and carry her lavish purses. So many weekends of my childhood were spent in that house both when she was alive and after; it seemed to take years to go through her things. I got to keep her mink stoles, which I still wear to this day. I think those long hours spent buried in the past gave me the taste of places and things that existed before me.
Twenty years later, I still find myself wandering through stores of the past. When I moved to NYC I found my favorite of the past thrift store, Monk Vintage in Williamsburg, complete with memorabilia from the 40s to the rock n roll era and beyond. I spent this past Wednesday afternoon exploring it’s wonders and playing an adult game of dress-up.
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