Charmed Life
It’s always cool when you get lost in Baltimore, and end up discovering something you’d heard about but never knew quite where it was. This was the case for me a few years back with Trinacria , the great Italian grocery on N. Paca Street that has an amazing selection of olives, cheap but good wine, cheeses and delicious sandwiches (the sicilian tuna is especially good).
Anyway, yesterday I was on MLK Jr. Blvd. heading out of town to teach at UMBC when I learned classes had been canceled. So I popped a quick right and another right, and found myself near the intersection of Baltimore and Poppleton streets, right by the Goodwill Boutique store, which I had read about a few months back in The Sun. I quick pulled over and parked.
Given what I’d read, I was expecting to walk in and see rack after rack of high-end designer labels, sort of a Loehmann’s-but-used kind of place. That’s not what I found on the rainy Tuesday evening I visited; I spotted nary a Gucci or Prada or any other fancy label in the whole joint. No worries—-I never shop by labels, anyway—but if you come expecting high-end designer clothes, I’m pretty sure you’ll be disappointed here.
If, however, you come expecting a clean, well-laid out, well-lit, store with a good variety of clothes from which the real stinkers have been culled, you’ll be satisfied. I saw a nice rack of formal gowns (prom season is coming up), a good selection of women’s business suits and men’s suits, several racks of shirts and sweaters (grouped by color instead of size), some jeans (no designer ones, alas), and a rack of handbags. I’d say the strongest selection was in shoes—some nice heels, sandals and flats—though they tended to be in size 9 or higher, or size 6. (I feel like I’ve been seeing the most amazing deals on beautiful size 6s lately—most recently at Ma Petite Shoe—causing me to curse my size 8 hooves.) I did pick up a great pair of taupe size 9 Nine West shoes, one of those flats/sneaker hybrids that are pretty popular right now, for a friend. How much, you ask? $5. Sold!
Throughout the store, there are mini-tableaux of decorative items—cute teapots and dishes, picture frames, object d’art—just like at Anthropologie. It’s really a nice little store, definitely worth a visit—or a weekly visit, which is the only real way to shop thrift and consignment stores, as veterans know.
In my ideal world, every neighborhood would have a consignment store (along with a small grocery store with a good bakery, a pizza-by-the-slice shop, a bar, a liquor store, a coffee shop, a bank, a post office, and a small hardware store like Falkenhan’s). And in my ideal world, if you needed a dress or a new coat, the first place you’d go would be that consignment shop—not the mall. And when you went to said consignment shop and found yourself that dress or coat, you wouldn’t have to pay for it, because you’d have a credit from all the clothes you’d brought. The whole enterprise would work like a pyramid scheme—but in an awesome, non-Bernie Madoff way.
Sigh. A gal can dream.
Goodwill Boutique, 1 N. Poppleton St, Baltimore, MD 21201, 410-244-6210
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Hours: Mon - Sat 9:00 am to 6 pm
Falkenhan’s Hardware, 3401 Chestnut Ave, Baltimore, MD 21211, (410) 235-7771
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/15/09 at 10:17 AM
