The Longest Yard Sale 2012

August was pretty busy, ya'll. I went to the Longest Yard Sale in the World. (You know - the garage sale that takes place on the first weekend in August and stretches from Michigan to Alabama? I've actually been twice before. I'm pretty much an expert at junk.) Spending four days straight looking at treasures is pretty much the stuff that genie lamp wishes are made of, in my opinion.

This year I roamed the outer fields of Ohio and Kentucky with four other ladies with impeccable taste:

There may have been a little worry at first that we'd all be competing for the same treasures, but I think it speaks well for us as civil human beings and for the immensity of the Yard Sale that we managed to come home without any missing limbs or bloody scratch marks from trying to claw finds out of eachother's hands, AND we still ended up with a luggage rack that looked like this:

Maybe you want to know what is inside all of those suitcases? You and the airport security both want to know. I'll tell you as long as you don't unpack my suitcase and hold everything up while laughing and showing it to your buddy who is working the x-ray machine.

There were old forgotten treasures like viewmaster projectors.

Pretty collars and pins and other things I like to wear.

And, maybe I picked up some decorative baby toys that I got a preemptive kick out of as I imagined future children using their iPhone to look up photos of what a telephone switchboard would have ever been used for.

(I posted a few more pics on the AHV blog if you'd like to keep looking at old things.)

One new addition to this year's adventure was a quick stop at Dollywood, aka the most patriotic and tacky of all theme parks, hidden right outside of Knoxville, TN.

There are a lot of all-American bald eagles around. While waiting in line for roller coasters, you felt a little like you were in a motivational calendar.

The sign posts in the park actually didn't give you any direction, but you did feel good about yourself as you wandered aimlessly in search of a bathroom.

There was also plenty of Dolly paraphernalia to peruse. Her hair reached epic proportions in many of the photos, and there was evidence of her being BFF with a lot of other famous people (like Rod Stewart, who incidentally in the 70s was dressed like every blogger in 2012).

Indeed, the whole experience left me motivated (to pursue bigger hair and more sequins in my life).

re: The Art Houses of Detroit

Why does everyone look at me weird when I tell them that Detroit is where Derek and I decided to go for our one year anniversary?

The rise/fall of and struggle to rebuild Detroit over the last few years has been interesting to watch. We'd been hearing about so much opportunity in the revitalization of Detroit - you can imagine that the news of abandoned buildings being sold for $500 spread like wildfire to anyone who pays four times that in rent every month - and wanted to see it firsthand.

When a city built on the wealth of the car industry loses its big stronghold in that market, and the only other surviving industries left in town include Faygo (drink of choice for Juggalos everywhere) and Better Made Snack Food* (whose best selling Rainbow Chips are actually just a bag of crispy-to-the-point-of-being-burned potato chips).... well? It makes it easy to see how so many buildings have ended up abandoned, and how people have moved elsewhere.


One upside of those abandoned buildings is the artists that they are attracting.

There are a group of several homes on Moran Street in Hamtramck that were purchased by Power House Production and left to the hands of various artists to beautiful and create out of the rubble. The houses aren't really open to the public at this point, but we happen to have an IN (thanks, Harrison) and were able to see the awesome Powerhouses up close and personal.

We started with Monica Canilao's Treasure Nest, which includes an elaborate porch collage, a chandelier room with rotating mass of lightable objects, an installation made of the soft wooden backs of destroyed Detroit furniture, a huge wooden bird on the side of the house and more.

photo credit: Juxtapoz




Saelee Oh's illustrations, with wooden installations by local architecture students:



Swoon
(the hole in the floor existed even before the artists arrived. apparently the neighborhood folk used to congregate there at night, and one person would sit in the hole and tell ghost stories to the people sitting on the floor above):




Richard Colman & RETNA:





I'm not sure who made this light barn out back, but it was beautiful. The roof was filled with glass rods that filtered the sunlight into the darkened room and looked pretty rad. Apparently it works at night too:



It was really inspiring to see so many great artists currently hard at work to beautify and revitalize the area.

Closer to Downtown Detroit is one of the original "art house" projects by Tyree Guyton - The Heidelberg Project started in the 80s, encompasses an entire block, and encourages a lot of community interaction/artwork. (Check out the Google Maps Street View to get a good sense of this one).

3658 Heidelberg Street Detroit, MI 48207





We also visited Hamtramck Disneyland, which was built in the 90s (and looks a little more rickety than the Disneyland I grew up with).
12087 Klinger St (Alley in back)
Hamtramck, MI 48211



I really enjoyed seeing all these wonderfully creative spaces that my homeowner's association would have been shocked and appalled by. It makes me want to buy a $500 house, bust out my hammer and a glue gun and see what I could create. And the Faygo would flow freely ...

*Fun Fact: The Better Made Chip website boasts that Detroiters eat 7lbs of potato chips a year on average, whereas the rest of the country is hovering somewhere around 4lbs