If you want to buy St. Louis-oriented items—whether it be for the holiday, or simple, daily use—there are three distinct ways of going about the experience. One is to head to a shop specifically dealing in regionally produced wares. Another other is to leave things to chance, in the form of America’s favorite penny-pinching pastime, thrift store shopping. The third is to buy a good, or service, directly from the maker; it’s almost needless to say that these are interesting encounters, too.
Here are recaps on three recent purchasing experiences, one from each of the above camps. It should be noted that none of the buys were planned; they were all spur-of-the-moment and, perhaps, that aspect shook a little extra magic dust onto the haul of goods.
St. Louis Curio Shoppe
2301 Cherokee Street, 63118; stlcurioshoppe.com
Running into Cherokee’s Curio Shoppe for a quick errand can turn into a somewhat longer affair, thanks to Kirstin Emerson Gassel and Jacque Brown finding objects of particular interest for each shopper’s personal tastes. They’re sneaky like that. Let’s just say that you have a penchant for (oh, I dunno) musical albums and out-of-print zines. Well, it just so happens that the Shoppe has some recently unearthed items so weird and wonderful that you turn quickly from awestruck, mouth-agape simpleton into a full-on, debit card-wielding shopper.
We’ll start with the record, Christmas in Saint Louis, offered up by the St. Louis Christmas Carols Association. A real time piece, the album gives away its age, featuring a lineup sure to bring a smile to the face of long-time St. Louisans. You’ve got County Supervisor Gene McNary and City Mayor James Conway each greeting their citizens. You’ve got baseball Cardinal icon Ted Simmons with a scriptural reading from St. Luke. And you’ve got longtime local entertainers and broadcasters such as Harry Fender, Jack Carney and the Lester Family, each adding tracks. This is a real hodge-podge of a listen, with Bill Danforth and Dan Deirdorf getting in on the Yule action, along with musical groups of the day, like the Lindenwood College Madrigal Singers. Today, it’s a quirky, curiosity piece, priced at $3, worth the buy, if only for the sports oddities and general, mid ‘70s vibe.
Which neatly brings us to the next item, one so unexpected and surprising, that four copies left the store immediately. The item: Sex and Saint Louis, a 1976 black-and-white, magazine that’s about, um, sex and St. Louis. Written by Post-Dispatch employees, among others, the 52-page magazine’s undoubtedly got a strange story behind it, but we’re not exactly able to tell it. To explain: the Curio Shoppe bought 100 copies off of the publisher, who recently found a stack of 900 issues in his basement. Said publisher doesn’t wish his name to be attached to this piece, preferring that the attention given to the Curio Shoppe and publication, itself (which, of course, contains his name). But we’ll respect the wish.
So what’s in the zine, itself? Gosh! Where to start!
There’s a seven-page photo spread, “Hey, Won’t You Be my Little PARTY DOLL?” in which a bearded “loser” takes a blow-up doll on a date to the old Varsity Theater. There’s “Burlesqued in St. Louis,” which chronicles the then-dying embers of the longtime STL burlesque culture of the mid-20th century. There’s a sober investigation entitled “Sex For Sale on the Stroll in the Central West End,” which describes the prostitution taking place near Gaslight Square, a district which had only been “dead” for a few years at that point. There’s even a send-up of the classic local institution “Our Own Oddities,” relabeled “Our Own Idioties.” The magazine’s got an odd feel, as if it was trying to balance the smart wit of an Vanity Fair or Esquire with the randy sophomore humor of a Mad Magazine, and, in some of the cases, this publication hit the mark squarely.
Apparently, there was a second issue being readied, but it never hit the print shop floor. This, then, is it, one of the weirdest examples of a “lost” St. Louis zine that you’ll ever find. Published for $2, available today for $5 and easily worth every cent. Wow. This one’s just... wow, wow, wow.
Mers Goodwill Outlet
3728 Market Street, 63110; mersgoodwill.com
There was a reasonable amount of press given to the arrival of a buy-by-the-pound outlet store in the Goodwill system this past spring. The massive, 22,000-square foot facility, of course, is found in the old Famous/Macy’s storage building on Market, located between Jefferson and Grand on one of those not-quite-there streets cut off by Highway 40. It’s a curious part of town, half-industry and half-abandoned, so it’s not as if Goodwill’s got people just happening by their monstrous, first-floor retail space.
But people do find their way there, undoubtedly. Last Monday night, for example, the place was teeming with shoppers, the line usually between five to eight deep, with dozens of customers steadily working their way through countless rolling-bins, strung together like strung-out trains. Each one of them, theoretically, has some type of theme to it, so that if you’re thumbing through a bin of clothes, there’ll be other clothes beneath them. Some might be filled with books, or toys. It seems, though, that no matter what the intent of stockers at the Goodwill outlet, the bins find themselves in a rather chaotic state of, for lack of a better term, bric-a-brac.
A bin, then, might have a flattened soccer ball, a 1992 aerobics video on VHS, a single running shoe and a t-shirt from a championship bowling team. Loosely, these would all be considered sporting items, but when cast into a huge tub, it takes a minute to discern the original intent. There’s also a tendency to go ahead and toss in pretty much everything that comes through the door. Surely, there’s a line of quality that has to be met; used Kleenexes, if donated, probably wouldn’t get through the system, but... well, we won’t say that some items challenge the idea of “lightly worn.”
What’s amazing about the end result is the price. Your picking has a purpose and that’s to: find odd items, while not paying much, at all. A pushcart of stuff came to $3.50, give or take a couple pennies. In that lot: a Flashdance-era troll doll; a book from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In; an authentic “Reason for the Season” holiday sweater; and, per our blog’s intent, ashtrays from the Ralston Purina Company, dated 1972 and 1980. They could probably be used for other purposes, but were definitely meant for cigarette ashes. Or, to eventually wind up in some “hip” collection of St. Louis fun clutter. It can take awhile to unearth such items in the Mers bins, but a good picker knows that it takes time to find treasure.
Bob Reuter, Photographer
Out in the street, or on Facebook
Bob Reuter is offering a new photo book, Light Fuse and Run, which has had a couple of events tailored to its release. (Including a this-past-weekend signing stoppe at The Curio Shoppe.) He also carries the book around with him. To tell the story of my purchase of Light Fuse, I’ll use a quick bit of dialogue.
Crone: Bob, are you selling those books?
Retuer: I am.
Crone: How much?
Reuter: 15 dollars.
Crone: (Hands over money.)
Retuer: (Hands over book.)
It was as simple as that. Though the book’s not been given a good once-over, yet, there’re plans to sit down with this one in the extreme near future. Perhaps while listening to the old football Cardinals singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas...”
