Old Stuff + My Love of It
Yep, I had the old Barbies out last week. I wanted to see if there were any good disco dresses in their box (coffin?) for spring fashion inspiration but I didn’t find much. Who knows where those hot dresses ended up? I suspect my sister’s basement… that’s where all the good stuff is.

I have all my old Barbies. I just love old stuff. I can’t walk into a thrift store or antiques store and walk out empty handed. If they clean a place up and try to make it more presentable, I no longer like it. This is why I don’t shop at Goodwill – they made it feel like a chain store with bright lighting and clothes that are at most five years old. Yick.

My favorite place in the Twin Cities to browse for stuff in all shapes and forms is the Mall of St. Paul. Stepping in there is like going to an antique mall in a smaller town – there isn’t any pretension and no hipsters (well, a minimum of hipsters) are wandering around looking for jackalopes or whatever else they saw encased in a bell jar on Design Sponge. I’ve been going there long enough now that I know exactly what booths to hit and can case their two floors in less than an hour over lunch.

Recently, they cleaned up their basement. I would be against this except that some booths down there were so crowded and forlorn, and the ceiling so low, that it felt like standing in a hoarders crawl space. Now, entire sections of it are spiffed up with new vendors who have less stuff but very well-curated – notably Rank & File (they have an etsy shop) and Rehomed Retro, who also have an eBay store, although the stuff they have in The Mall is better.

Maybe this is the year I reconsider eBay. I got so excited in 2002 when I won a t-shirt with a photo of President Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, on it touting his “Billy Beer.” I thought I was hot shit.

[That t-shirt will be coming out this spring. I learned the danger of storing things too long in a basement when I discovered, to my horror, that my pets.com t-shirt from 2000 (with the dog hand puppet on it – remember him?) got stained while lying in a plastic tub in my basement. I have to get out the bleach to try to save it.]

Anyway, I learned an eBay pro-tip this week on The Look Book at NY Mag that has me fired up. I’m the kind of crazy lady who is just one moto jacket away from spending  A LOT of time creating and saving searches on eBay.

On my last trip to The Mall I got a very homemade braided leather and stone necklace, a skirt with giraffes on it for spring and two coffee mugs, one of which is this:

Giraffe print on skirt:

And now, after nattering on for too long about stuff, the rest of The Stack:

Watching
On Sunday, FOX starts broadcasting the new Cosmos hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson. It’s billed as an epic journey through time and space. Yeah, I could do that! There was just a phenomenal profile of Tyson in The New Yorker and he’s speaking in Minneapolis on May 8 at Beth El Synagogue. Do you follow him on Twitter? You should. If he ran for President, I would vote for him.

Wearing
A slideshow of women in biker jackets will convince you that you need a biker jacket.

If you need vintage-y clothes to wear and don’t mind it already being curated, Rewind is having their Get Pretty sale today through Sunday. They have two locations in Minneapolis – in Northeast and on Lyndale in South Minneapolis. If I go, I’m on the hunt for a sweater coat.

Books
You can’t read it yet, but if you’re a Hollywood Babylon fan (God, I hope you are!) then keep your eye on Scandals of Classic Hollywood book coming out in September. I’m not sure if I can trust it or not – no one does scandal like Kenneth Anger (and Dominick Dunne) but Ken is super old (and Dominick is dead), so we need to get our scandal re-hashes anywhere we can.

Doing
Even though I’m a nonbeliever, the idea of Lent is rather appealing this year. You know, the whole 40 days and 40 nights thing. I think people rather enjoy deprivation, as long as they know it’s not permanent. It’s just enough time to feel transformative. Forty days – that’s how long I need to get my shit together. Lent started on Wednesday and I have yet to decide my course of action, but I say better late than never.

Travel
The Modern Vintage Chicago show, which is associated with the ongoing Randolph Street Market but separate, is the weekend of May 2-4, 2014. That’s my birthday weekend. This show, which happens twice a year, it touted as the “Barney’s  of vintage.” I’m just saying.