Now that's cheap!

Yesterday in the laundromatt a guy was typing away at his laptop and I noticed he never checked to see if his washer was done. Later I realized that he wasn't doing his laundry at all, but there stealing the wireless connection from the cafe next door because he was too cheap to buy a coffee.

More Thrifting Tips

Going Thrifting

Mastering the Art of Thrift-Store Shopping

By Camper English

Thrift stores are more than places to pick up other starving artists. Thrifting is an activity that costs very little money, and spending all day shopping won’t break the bank as much at Harry’s Junk & Junk as it will at Hermès. And luckily, those stores are rarely next to each other at the mall, so you’re not as tempted to cross-shop from one to the other.

In most cases, the thrift clothes are cheaper than new ones, but not always. You’ll pay more for an ironic “Hammer Time!” T-shirt now than you would have in the ’80s. These days the thrift industry runs pretty efficiently, with some people making a living (or at least good pocket change) buying items from low-end thrift stores and reselling them to high-end ones. So the trendy thrift stores in the trendy parts of town end up with only the most expensive clothes, and it can feel like the lower-end stores have already been picked over so much that they have nothing but junk.

But the advantages of thrifting are many. You can find crazy clothes at the Salvation Army and Out of the Closet you won’t get anywhere else, like an acid-washed denim jacket that says “Bad Boys Club” in neon on the back. (I actually own one of these thanks to thrifting. I’m just waiting for acid-wash to come back into style…)

read the rest of the story here.

How not to rob a liquor store

How not to rob a liquor store

Sell It

Hawking Your Wares

Pointers for Selling Stuff In the Online Marketplace

By Camper English

As selling items online gets easier, it’s actually harder to sell anything. You go on eBay now and find used items, new items, services, things stolen out of celebrities’ trash, and intangible goods like teenagers’ virginity. It’s gotten so that it is harder to sell a used jacket online than it is a jelly bean shaped like Jesus.

In a previous column, I wrote about selling used books, CDs, DVDs, and clothing to physical stores. I think that’s the way to go when you’re trying to unload regular items you can still buy on the market, and turning a big profit is less of a motive than clearing out closet space and getting a few bucks as a reward.

Say you’re just doing a spring cleaning or preparing to move. You’ve got a whole bunch of disparate, not-terribly-expensive items that you want to get rid of in a relatively short amount of time. Do you really want to spend hours and hours at the post office mailing individual items all over the country?

If you live somewhere you can hold a sidewalk sale or garage sale, it’s probably easiest to unload stuff that way. But if not, consider putting your items for sale on Craigslist (or another local Web site, if there is such a thing where you live). There is no need to make a separate post for each item, which is another time-saver over eBay. Just list all the items and their prices, and include photos of everything. If you have a ton of stuff, consider uploading all the pictures to Flickr or another photo-sharing Web site and pointing people to that site. (On your Flickr photos, add the prices in the comment section so people don’t have to look back and forth between sites.)

Read the rest of the article here.