Antique Stores

I don't think it's any secret that I love antique stores. To me, antique stores are so important because they fill in the blanks that museums leave behind. At museums, we showcase the beautiful, and the historically relevant materials of the past. These are all well and fine, and I have no issue with them at all, but it tends to pain a rosier, less clown filled past than it actually was. Antique stores have no fear of letting us all see the other things that paint a fuller picture of how weird we are, both now and in the past (and our weird obsessions with clowns)

Seriously, it's creeping me out (that goes to you too, baby in a cup.)

Last week, I had the chance to go back to the antique store that will always stand out to me as the antique store (Merchant Square, Chandler AZ. I forgot to take an outside picture, so just imagine it in your mind, or google it.) The stuff I've found at this antique store is really amazing, I've found the taxidermy fox and the whoosimawhatsit at this place. I feel I can usually sort the stuff I've found into four catagories:

The Mundane, but neat stuff that people used day to day:

They used this thingie to make those 20's curls back in...the 20's

The Creepy stuff (clowns are in this category, always, without exception):

Spock mask, with a Russian hat for some, as of yet unknown, reason

The "this has no place in an antique store and literally happened about 4 years ago:"

Unless they're saying John Mcain belongs in an antique store.


And ol timey racism:

I just don't even have a comment for this, just soak in that prejudice.

Most of the store really is dedicated to these four things. Often booths will be dedicated to just one of these four categories and nothing else (except racism, that's always just sprinkled into every booth.) While I like all these booths, and I think other people would say the hat booth is the best booth in the store, I will always pick the advertisements booth as my favorite section.

It's filled with  hundreds of old magazine covers, ads, and other miscellany. I'm not like Pepper, I don't buy most of the stuff I fall in love with here. I have an old video camera and a typewriter I found in my grandparents attic, but the only things I can say I really collect, from here or anywhere, are these old advertisements. Every time I come to Merchants square, I have to get one of these, this time I got this Kellogs one.







I think what's so great about these advertisements is that they really kind of show how people pseudo were back in the day. They show how we wrote stuff (Golly! and Boy! were popular exclamations) what we bought and how people marketed it to us (which at the very least shows how the media thought we thought.) Mostly it showed how racist we tended to be:

I mean, just really really racist:

I mean wow:

There used to be this mascot for Cream of Wheats that managed to show up in 75% of the advertisements in the CEREAL-ADVERTISEMENTS section that I'm not ashamed to say I looked through front to back. I can't say for sure if he himself is in some way racist (I'm leaning towards yes? I mean his name is Rastus, so...I don't know), but I can say two things about him

1. He won't stop looking at me in the eyes in every single picture of him there is

Q-Quit It!

and 2. This picture of him certainly is:

I'm just so sorry for all of this.

I love visiting this store whenever I'm down in Arizona, and I'd love to just show you all the pictures I took in there (and I might just make an Imgur folder or something) but I think I'll close with this postcard I found that really shows why I love history so much, there are so many untold stories out there, and all we have are these glimpses into them, and with these stories that end up not in history books, but in antique store bargain bins, we can't do much more than try to fill in the gaps ourselves.

Dear Ruth,
A picture of home, away from home, maybe to be forever. 
It's beginning to look that way.
Surely hope Ol' Betsy holds up to get you there, i'm sure she will.
You take good care of her.
See you in Alpines
Ohinleyt Chet (?)