Thursday, August 18, 2005
becoming the beast
Vin and i went to the Sachs Fifth Avenue Company Store the other day. I can't say that I'm particularly lured by brands, but if a pair of Armani pants are ten bucks, and they look good, I'm gonna buy them. My motto is, "I Buy What I Want as Long as it looks Good and it's Cheap". I'll go anywhere: the Goodwill, Wal-mart, my grandmother's basement, anywhere I can get something that I can either re-make or use as-is. I'm pretty damned crafty when you think about it. Damn! Did I talk about sewing? I love to sew!! But I digress from the real story...
First of all, it was a madhose in the S.F.A.C.S. I should've known by the portable chairs that were stacked by the front door; these meant that people had actually waited in line to get in. (Yes, people do bring their own chairs to this place.) We went in. Everywhere there were women- and a few men- with bound and determined looks on their faces, like they had to take a good shit. A table of goods was piled high with clothes. I gingerly picked through it. Other women were literally grabbing the clothing, deftly eyeing each piece and then tossing it aside like some shucked ear of corn that had too many worms. Things were getting ripped. I decided to head past the shoes...big mistake! A woman had a shoe-alance sized pile of shoes, trying to squeeze her callused feet until a small strappy pair of Jimmy Choo's. (Mind you, I'm pushing a stroller through all this.) Ultimately, I managed to find a couple good pieces admist the ruckus, and I joined the checkout line of hyper-yet-pissed looking shoppers that wove around the back of the store. Three women at the front of the line called attention to themselves. They looked as if they were five-year olds who had picked out their outfits for the very first time. One was squeezed into a metallic pair of pants that was emblazoned with the Gucci symbol over and over; her top was way too small for her back rolls and they poured out of it, showing her bra from admist the flimsy Versace nightmare. (I could go on and on, but you get the idea.) Aparently they had a shitload of stuff "on hold". Like, I mean three large garbage bags of stuff that they were digging through. The last time I put something on hold at a store, I didn't have the money because I was sixteen and I hadn't got paid yet. Nowadays, I'm either going to buy it or not. It's quite a simple choice, really. One of the women was holding a Gucci leather strap, which appeared to be a brown dog leach, but was really a keychain. "You gonna buy that?", her friend asked. "No, I'm just gonna hold it. It still sixty bucks, on sale." Glad we got that cleared up. Meanwhile, a man decided he didn't want the Prada handbag that he was going to purchase and he held it up for anyone else in line if they wanted it. "Ooh, me!", screamed one of the women. This Prada bag was bubblegum pink and looked like something I used to take with me when I went rollerskating in 1985. It was terribly ugly, about the size of a business envelope, but I guess the Prada label made it all worthwhile. As I stood their with Vince, milling all this over, the line behind me grew, And that's when he started to cry.
He's teething, the poor thing. Thank god I can't remember what it feels like to have a tooth spontaneously erupt from my gums, but I'm sure I'd be crying too, if I could. The tall, willowy russian lady behind me said, in broken english, "Why don't you see if they will let you in the front?", and promplty took it upon herself to go to the front of the line and ask for me. "That woman has an infant. Can you let her go?" The fashion victums answered,"No! I got three kids an' no one's ever done that for me! No way. We was here first." I smiled at the russian lady. She said, rather loudly, "That's a sad way to live", and I looked at her and thanked her for trying. It turns out that the three badly-dressed women were still there after I had checked out. I happened to get an extrodinarily nice man to ring me up, and I ended paying a lot less than I thought because there were some sales that I hadn't known about.
A good buy brings out the worst in people, like an all-you-can-eat buffet, or the breakfast bar at a Big Boy's. Food and clothing sales make us primal: the more there is, the more beastly we become.
First of all, it was a madhose in the S.F.A.C.S. I should've known by the portable chairs that were stacked by the front door; these meant that people had actually waited in line to get in. (Yes, people do bring their own chairs to this place.) We went in. Everywhere there were women- and a few men- with bound and determined looks on their faces, like they had to take a good shit. A table of goods was piled high with clothes. I gingerly picked through it. Other women were literally grabbing the clothing, deftly eyeing each piece and then tossing it aside like some shucked ear of corn that had too many worms. Things were getting ripped. I decided to head past the shoes...big mistake! A woman had a shoe-alance sized pile of shoes, trying to squeeze her callused feet until a small strappy pair of Jimmy Choo's. (Mind you, I'm pushing a stroller through all this.) Ultimately, I managed to find a couple good pieces admist the ruckus, and I joined the checkout line of hyper-yet-pissed looking shoppers that wove around the back of the store. Three women at the front of the line called attention to themselves. They looked as if they were five-year olds who had picked out their outfits for the very first time. One was squeezed into a metallic pair of pants that was emblazoned with the Gucci symbol over and over; her top was way too small for her back rolls and they poured out of it, showing her bra from admist the flimsy Versace nightmare. (I could go on and on, but you get the idea.) Aparently they had a shitload of stuff "on hold". Like, I mean three large garbage bags of stuff that they were digging through. The last time I put something on hold at a store, I didn't have the money because I was sixteen and I hadn't got paid yet. Nowadays, I'm either going to buy it or not. It's quite a simple choice, really. One of the women was holding a Gucci leather strap, which appeared to be a brown dog leach, but was really a keychain. "You gonna buy that?", her friend asked. "No, I'm just gonna hold it. It still sixty bucks, on sale." Glad we got that cleared up. Meanwhile, a man decided he didn't want the Prada handbag that he was going to purchase and he held it up for anyone else in line if they wanted it. "Ooh, me!", screamed one of the women. This Prada bag was bubblegum pink and looked like something I used to take with me when I went rollerskating in 1985. It was terribly ugly, about the size of a business envelope, but I guess the Prada label made it all worthwhile. As I stood their with Vince, milling all this over, the line behind me grew, And that's when he started to cry.
He's teething, the poor thing. Thank god I can't remember what it feels like to have a tooth spontaneously erupt from my gums, but I'm sure I'd be crying too, if I could. The tall, willowy russian lady behind me said, in broken english, "Why don't you see if they will let you in the front?", and promplty took it upon herself to go to the front of the line and ask for me. "That woman has an infant. Can you let her go?" The fashion victums answered,"No! I got three kids an' no one's ever done that for me! No way. We was here first." I smiled at the russian lady. She said, rather loudly, "That's a sad way to live", and I looked at her and thanked her for trying. It turns out that the three badly-dressed women were still there after I had checked out. I happened to get an extrodinarily nice man to ring me up, and I ended paying a lot less than I thought because there were some sales that I hadn't known about.
A good buy brings out the worst in people, like an all-you-can-eat buffet, or the breakfast bar at a Big Boy's. Food and clothing sales make us primal: the more there is, the more beastly we become.
# posted by Christa @ 6:12 PM 
