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Yard Sales

 Summer means yard sale season. I love everything about it. I love the neon-green signs with sharpies and an arrow (time and address optional), I love when there's obnoxious music playing directly from someone's phone speaker, I love listening to people talk. I suspect that the most interesting conversations in the universe happen during yard-sales, something about sitting in fabric camping chairs and watching strangers rummage through your life that shakes stories loose.

 This picture is from a yard-sale that a family of musicians were holding before they moved to Bali to form a jazz band. I admit, I eavesdrop.

 At yard sales, I've seen skateboards, bunnies, entire dining room sets, a marionette puppet, and cumulatively enough graphic tee-shirts to clothe my high school's graduating class twice-over. And I don't even make a hobby of going to yard-sales, I just follow the arrows when I come across them. 

 I think that my favorite part about yard sales is the element of happenstance. Most of the time, I'm just on a walk when I look up and find myself surrounded by cardboard boxes and an older woman ignoring me from her folding chair. Impossible to prepare! I feel like a tourist, I can't help myself from getting just one memento, no matter what. Maybe I will read that copy of the Canterbury Tales... One day. 

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  1. SperosDecember 1, 2025 at 10:45 AM

    Hi Zoe, I came upon this blog post while searching for the guitar shown in this image, which I've been looking to buy. Any chance we could DM and you could put me in touch with the family hosting this yard sale? If you have their contact info. Thanks

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