Steps: 14, 887
It's 1pm on a Sunday afternoon. You wake up, your head wedged tight in the grips of some metaphysical vice, jonesing for advil, some gatorade, and a tall stack of banana chocolate chip pancakes. You fumble open your wallet, speed-dialing Sanford's diner, only to find that all you have to tide you over 'til the next paycheck is a five dollar bill and a coupon for a 6-pack of Charmin. Sound familiar? I thought so.
Clearing my head with a strong cup of D&D hazelnut, I racked my brains for a way to suffer through this unfortunate Sunday. The AstoriaGirls had planned an all-out adventure to the new flea market in Fort Greene(http://www.brownstoner.com//brooklynflea/), but a high school tennis court crammed full of vintagey goodness is a terrible scenario when you're broker than broke. There was always the possibility of not shopping at all, but lets face it, what's more depressing than spending a Sunday indoors, stuffing your face with stale Grape-Nuts and watching re-runs of Degrassi High? So I formed myself a contigent plan: if we were schlepping all the way into Brooklyn in the first place, we may as well make a pitstop at that Buffalo Exchange (http://www.buffaloexchange.com/) everyone's so wild about these days. Spending time in Williamsburg always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but the possibility of making a few extra bucks selling my junky castoffs to some hipster in a fedora made the trip to Bedford Street vaguely stomachable. I'd even title my weekend post: How to spend five bucks and three bags of clothing on the best deal in Brooklyntown!
So off we went, with three whole duffel bags stuffed to the gills with crappy old duds we hadn't worn in decades, all freshly laundered, folded and squashed into three moderately presentable stacks. We showed up around 2:30pm and, surprise-surprise, the line wasn't terrible: Two goaty-looking dudes, and teenage girl with her father. Gwenny Deets and I took our place in line, while JBS took Miss. Marble to check out the racks. At first everything was sunshine and rainbows, everyone seemed happy-go-lucky, flushed and primed for a good ole Sunday barter. I even recognized the $400 petrol blue hobo I coveted last year, shimmering off in the discounted distance. But bit by bit, I started to glean just how this corrupt operation works: At the top of the staircase stood two hipper-than-thou Buffalo Exchange "Buyers" holding court behind matching glass display cases. We plebians lined up at the bottom, and like good little pilgrams, schlepped our castoffs up the stairwell for sacrifical slaughter. The female Buyer was attending to a colossal suitcase stuffed to the brim with colorful fare, which she pulled out item by item, stretching and shimmying before tossing them into a pile. It should be noted that this pile was full of unique, fashion-forward, and dare I say, expensive looking clothing. Surely this must be the pile she tallies, the good pile, the prodigal pile, but my stomach sank as I watched her shove it all back in the suitcase and direct its owner to the nearest Salvation Army. I gulped. Shuffled my feet. Discretely peeked into one of my duffels. Surely they'd buy my stuff. It was mostly namebrand labels, some of them with tags, and nothing beneath a J. Crew or an Abercombie. You know, the type of topshelf stuff people wear when they come from states beginning with "M." Despite her load of Samsonite rubbish, the owner of the suitcase had managed to earn a total of $153, which was heartening -- at least they paid well for the things they deemed fashionable. Fifteen minutes had passed. We moved up a step.
Next, one of the goatish boys brought up a modest trashbag offering of crumpled t-shirts. I scoffed. T-shirts. Like that'll work. A part of me smiled darkly on the inside as the Buyer tossed aside fifteen or so brightly-colored rejects. She then paused at a powder blue number emblazened with a dove and some generic Christian themeology. Oh yeah, she exclaimed, This Jesus stuff is sooo hot right now. Bam. Into the bin. She followed it up with a pink checkered button down, a pair of Timberlands and some lemon-colored Pumas. $53.00. Not bad. Apparently effeminite is in.
I was startin' to sweat. I could see what was going on here. My cool factor was being evaluated in a store entirely populated by people wearing skintight pants and aviators. Acidly ironic, yet oddly nerve-wracking. It was highschool all over again, except you were being judged by the losers who used to get shoved in the trashbins at lunch. I was already scrapping the whole deal, revising my original title to: How to spend five bucks on the best deal in Brooklyntown!, but Gwen and I kept moving, creeping like sherpas up this staircase of shame. A whole half-hour had passed and I was now only moments away from their glass throne, my heart pounding, my blood boiling at the obnoxious paradox to which I had willingly subjected myself. Gwenny Deets rolled her eyes at my anxiousness, ambivilent to the heinousness we were about to encounter. She'd done this kind of thing before, to wild success. And then, there we were: our moment of truth. We stepped up with our bags of abject loserdom, presenting a valid form of ID so we could be logged on their list of the tragically un-hip. I watched with set jaw and hard heart, as the design maven flicked through my bags, item by item, my pile of rejection growing larger by the second. When all was said and done, my cool factor amounted to an asymmetrical top from Forever 21 and an Old Navy trapese dress I accidentally shrunk in the wash. My retribution? $6.00. Which, while in retrospect is more than my original fiver, was a total slap in the face. Plus, you couldn't even redeem it unless you purchased something in the store, so I was coerced into buying that petrol blue hobo for forty dollars. Which technically changed my post title to: How to go twenty-nine dollars in the hole to get rid of two of the crappiest things you've ever owned. (Yeah, I did the math.) While Gwenny and I had our proverbial guts strewn all over the counter, Janie B managed to find $100 worth of goodies in the actual store. Apparently, if you have a closet full of horizontal stripes and extra-terrestrian redemption, you'll make a killing here.
The four of us hauled our bags to the local Salvation Army, where we handed them over to a homeless man selling things on the street. I take great pleasure knowing that the homeless man will make a goldmine selling our rejects back to those same persnickety Billyburgers. Yes, I watched as my heart grew two times smaller that day, shrinking with the hatred only Williamsburg can provoke. There was no Fort Greene Flea Market. No clever post title. No rejoicing. Instead, I decided it was more worth my while to spend my non-existent $5 on a loaf of bread on which to spread my halfeaten jar of peanut butter. THE END.
- WILLA K 
