Lunch Post: Stoop Sale! [UPDATED]

02.17.11

In New York City, stoop sales fill the ecological niche occupied by garage, yard, and tag sales elsewhere in the United States.

The stoop is an NYC institution, a familiar icon of the small-town vibe of big city life. Lacking yards and garages, we take to the stoops and sidewalks on sunny weekends to sell our excess junk, all the more necessary because we lack spare rooms and closets. But then, these sales aren’t just to shed crap, but to acquire it. My mother was a garage sale connoisseur, a champion yard sale bloodhound, a junk-shop junkie. My childhood was filled with resale shop forays and marathon garage sale quests, and our house was jammed with bizarre treasures. I’ve passed this on (with mixed feelings from my wife) to the Kid, and we justify it by saying we’re communing with Grandma’s spirit every time we follow a trail of hand-scrawled arrows taped to light poles, pointing the way to a stoop sale. The Holy Grail is always Legos, so I headed off that obvious answer by excluding it from the Lunch Post.

Ooooh! See, you can only find treasures like that at a stoop sale.

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