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Hey,
So there I was, minding my own business the day before the start of my college semester. Just put in a season of the Office to the ol' 360, was ready to have a lazy day. My phone rings and it's my good friend LunaTik, asking if I would like to join him on a trip to the flea market. I get giddy at the thought, and off we go to the land of low prices, lower quality control, and general insanity. I didn't even know it when I walked in, but a quick tour of the place, and I knew I had to document what I was seeing around me, so future generations could revel in the bullshittery that I was experiencing. What follows below is a photo tour of what I saw this day along with running commentary of what I can remember. Enjoy the fruits of my labor of spending an entire day looking like an asshole with a camera at a flea market.
We began our journey at the "One Dollar Store", which isn't so much of a store as it is a franchise when it comes to Tampa Flea Markets. After walking around two separate yet ajacent markets, I can say this with authority. Strangely, all of them seem to have the same mysterious slogan of "Some Items A Dollar and Up", which not only implies that there are items above and below a dollar, but undermines the very title of the store itself. Wonderful.
After looking around a bit, we were welcomed by this sign above a table with stacks upon stacks of T-Shirts. Several questions are raised here. Was this sign put up after an incident of people maliciously knocking over T-Shirts and then running off giggling like Snidely Whiplash? Or is it merely a precaution? If I did happen to unfold a bunch of shirts and try to leave, what kind of security would I be met with? Could they legally detain someone who refuses to fold shirts? What if a limbless blind man knocks over shirts, would he be trapped in there forever? These are the questions people.
No good flea market would be complete without a Wall O Tiki adorned with every wall decoration you need to make your friends think you went to Hawaii last summer. Nothing much more to say, other than I heart those Monster's Inc. bean bag chairs.
On to one of the surprising patterns of our trip, the persistent presence of stacks upon stacks of loose ShamWows. I would just say Shammies, but since they are stamped very clearly "Made in Germany" I know it's the good stuff Vince was talking about. When I took this picture, I was baffled by their advertisement of ShamWows as "blankets" and "comforters". Perhaps they had confused them with the similar "As Seen on TV" hit Snuggies? But then, as the trip went on, I kept seeing piles of these things loose everywhere.
I mean every shopkeep had enough ShamWows to run their own infomercials on late night TV. Is this where ShamWows come from? Did Vince Offer just go to a flea market and clear it out of Shammies, then go home and shoot a commercial? It still baffles me.
Then we have this sign. Referencing what I counted to be three shirts, a reminder that they are "Man's Wear" along with a reminder that "We do Wholesale!" and a sentence in Spanish. There were at least 5 other similar signs around this particular "One Dollar Store". At least they were consistent.
Just in case anyone was wondering at this point when they could go to the wonderful flea market in their home town, let me bring you down to earth with this charming picture of a used pot with old crusty food in it. Also, according to LunaTik, it smelled awful. This is no random picture, they were selling this and expecting money to take it off their hands, not giving you money to take it away.
But for every awful crusty pot, you also get gems like this half-assed Obama support shirt that I'm sure has been on the rack since mid 08. You can't get clip art quality shirts like this anywhere on the Internet, you can only find them in barely functioning bazaars like this one.
Here we have the Random Assortment of Super Heroes made in a Chinese Factory Playset. Another staple of horrible flea markets, this pack pictures a world where the Justice League consists of Black Robocop, Bug Eyes Batman, Spiderman, General Zod in a Superman Suit, and not one but TWO Red Power Rangers. Mr. Incredible is obviously the Professor X of the group, preferring to stay in the shadows and give orders from the Incredicave. All the Super Heroes Is Come!! indeed.
Not to be out done by the Justice League, this toy isle also contained the worst action figure interpretations of professional wrestlers ever seen by man. LunaTik holds Babyface Kane, and I say this not because he is a good guy, but because he literally has the face of a baby. I also took a picture of a Jeff Hardy so buff he must have been exercising with the included steel chair accessory, which is comically larger then the actual action figure. Unless the huge chairs are meant to signify that this is a line of "WWE Babies" action figures, which would make a lot of sense considering the time it takes for WWE to catch on to a fad.
In this strange isle populated by baby wrestlers and nonsensical superheroic teamups, what better way to shove more brands in then by painting cheap toy cars! Pictured is Ben 10-mobile, just one of several brands represented in the car toy department. Most of them seem to have been picked by the theme of new enough to not have cheap toy ripoffs but still old enough that people in China are aware of them. Anyway, I was about to say goodbye to the toy isle when I saw a toy that must have been designed by Freddy Krueger himself. Go on if you dare.
HEY KIDS, IT'S ME CRACKAJAX, THE HORRIBLE EYELESS APPLE DEMON HERE TO TAKE YOUR SOUL. PLAY WITH ME!
After deftly escaping our encounter with the apple demon, we began walking around again and came upon an entirely ordinary ATM. Ordinary until you look under the normal screen area and see a sign DEMANDING you to venture forth and receive a 10 minute massage free of charge. Not pictured due to creep factor overload is the place these massages were taking place, a small trailer like area with no windows. Needless to say, we both declined the ATM's invitation.
Another staple of flea markets such as these are seemingly useless products. Is a normal power strip too big for your? Are you saddened by having too look at empty holes? They take advantage of these beautiful mini power strips! Big enough to not be completely useless, small enough to require another power strip with only a computer, modem, and router hooked up, it's perfect for those times where you want to think to yourself in the future "What was I thinking?"
A 36 pack of spoons is not completely out of the ordinary in a store. A 36 pack of spoons that reminds you of the only time where a 36 pack of spoons would make sense is a treasure.
I'm not sure what the translation of this sign means, all I know that this store was the cowboy store. When I say that, I mean that every piece of clothing was cowboy related, except for the exception goth shirt that proves the rule. Between the boots and hats were also a series of cardboard cutouts of chicks with cowboys hats photoshopped onto them like the sign pictured. At this point, I was barely phased and felt no need to document this.
We next saw this sad sight, the remains of what was once a video game depository. Good news is that a local boy told us that the store had merely moved to the flea market across the street, and upon venturing there we found a wealth of old games and systems. I would have taken pictures of this as well, but I was distracted by the excellent selection of horrible Genesis games as well as the presence of a copy of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for Xbox. I asked the shopkeep about pricing, and he said it was in the 75 dollar range. I exchanged a look of respect and sadness, and left empty handed.
Back to the first Flea Market, we happened upon what could loosely described as a food court. Or at least, it was a food court at one point, as there was only one functioning food stand left. As eager as LunaTik was to sample their wares, I reminded him of where we currently were, and we left the area immediately.
We picked up in another dollar store. By this point we were on the lookout for ridiculousness as much as the cheap laptop hard drive that we came for. LunaTik found this "Jesus is my Homeboy" hat and giggled.
I meanwhile, found joy in the fact that the flea market had not only one knockoff brand of Sharpies, but two! Positioned right next to each other, and similar in everything but a few letter in the name, I laughed at the futility of all this secrecy. We've already seen logos everywhere, why can't they just rip off Sharpie? It's not like anyone actually comes to a flea market for Sharpies anyway.
After the Sharpies, we ventured into a dollar store that was also trying to pull off being a hardware store. It was here we found a weapon straight out of Dead Rising, the Pistol Crossbow. Not only does it get rid of the portability and small size advantage of a pistol, it gets rid of the handles and straight sights needed to operate a crossbow. Truly a marvelous invention.
We walked down the isle with the Pistol Crossbow, and we were not disappointed. We found boxes and boxes of full size (and longer) Machetes for the low low price of 5 dollars each. These were not play weapons like the aforementioned Crossbow, these were actual sharp gardening tools not hidden at all from small children or homicidal maniacs. Someone could without much trouble fill up a basket of things, grab one of these Machetes, and then walk out no problem because the store has armed you. Of course, for all I know, the store may have been run by Danny Trejo, I'm sure he knows best.
Adjacent to Machete's Chop Shop, we came across a more pinkish store with a sign that read "You Open You Buy". Seems ordinary, until you see that the sign is placed next to no obvious things to open. Unless we were supposed to open the mannikins? Maybe we missed out on an opportunity for buried treasure! We'll never know. Near the sign was plastic wrapped packages of panties, because when you go shopping for underwear you want to make sure there is a distinct possibility that they were used beforehand by a stranger.
Rounding out our Flea Market experience, we came across the classic Electronic Tiger Game Shaped Like More Popular Game Systems. Here we had a double whammy of a Playstation controller with big buttons instead of joysticks and no clear reason to be in the package and a PSP like contraption that accepts new screens for games. Of course, one of the games is called "The King of Fighters", obviously documenting how low SNK has gone over the past few years.
Some other items not worth of their own small section, but still warenting inclusion are as follows. A gizmo TV antenna which I'm almost positive was made before the digital TV conversion, making it about as useful as the greasy pot from before. A pack of Toilet Bowl Cleaners/Air Fresheners, which I assume you have the option of either throwing in the toilet bowl or hanging from your dashboard. A two pack of magnifying glasses that reminded me of Professor Layton and his ward. A calculator named the BIG DADDY, yet powered by sunlight. It also had less buttons then some of the other calculators on the shelf. Finally, a pair of fuzzy socks with nonsense on the label, as is standard.
We ended out trip to the flea market at a nearby Burger King which took 20 minutes to produce food and had none of the special cheese for the advertised Italian Chicken Sandwiches I ordered. American Cheese and marinara sauce don't go well together. It was a fitting end to a fitting day of swimming around the bottom of the barrel at the flea market. LunaTik didn't find his hard drive, but I got enough crap to fill up two pages of insanity. I encourage anyone with a sense of humor to spend a day wandering around the barren wasteland that is the local flea market, as you'll find things that you will turn over in your head for hours and hours. It's very stimulating. Just don't buy anything.
-Pudge
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