Saturday, January 31, 2015

Scrap Exchange Birthday Run

The Scrap Exchange Facebook constantly reminds me how I’m not the best customer with their constant updates. I look at these updates and say out loud, “I need to go.” Unfortunately when your favorite store is more than eighty miles away, it’s not the easiest trip to make. Instead of sticking around the office on my birthday, I decided to make the trip, just for that one store. The new location is a lot more spacious but I’m not sure if I’m completely sold on it. I feel like I found more stuff at the old location, mainly the “sticky items.” Mostly I look for stickers and clear industrial tape that was discarded for some reason. The circles of clear tape just isn’t there anymore and that makes me kind of sad. I can’t imagine finding the stuff anywhere else and that’s why I love going to that story…you’re not going to find this shit anywhere else.
I wondered around for an hour or so, looking through the tapes and the bits of paper, rubber stamps and general bullshit. I don’t care for the fabric or the glass leftovers so I can skip those sections. It’s all about the paper for me. It’s all about the blue bins for me. As usual, I put all of my things on the counter without knowing how much it was going to be. Sometimes it feels like you’re ripping them off and other times you get charged for every little thing. This time I was charged for everything! I mostly bought stickers that were leftover from Whole Foods. Out of context these things are going to be amazing.
The total was fifty-five dollars.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

you found some awesome treasures! they let go of so much stuff when they moved to the new location.. there were several weekends where everything was free and i missed them all :(((((

anyway, the scrap exchange is just a few neighborhoods away from us - give me a holler next time you're headed there!

allison
www.deardetective.com

Anonymous said...

oh, and happy belated birthday :D

zzzzzzzz said...

Oh a free day, wow that sounds awesome. A friend of mine lives in that neighborhood as well. Thanks for the birthday wishes.

B. Lee said...

I went to SCRAP in Portland. My kind of store! I also was only interested in the paper/office supplies. Here in Jax, FL, we have nothing of the like. Makes me sad. If I had all the time in the world, I would open up my own SCRAP center. But, alas, I have to do 9-5 for a living...le sigh.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jon,

We are so happy to have you as a regular customer. It says a lot when folks are willing to drive 80 miles just to come see us! We are still getting settled in our new space and will continue to flush it out with more awesome materials. Our paper section was one of the most difficult sections for us to move which is why we left most of it in the old space. We are still moving out of our old space and continuing to move things into our new store every week. We are looking for volunteer help with our paper since there is so much of it. Piles of scrap paper are heavy and chaotic, but there are still a lot of treasures in there. I’d like to invite you to join us in separating paper that should head to the new store (and save things that are headed for the recycling for yourself if you want). We are having a big volunteer work day on Sunday February 15th, but will be having other work days over there as well.

Thank you for your art. Thank you for your blogging.

You can contact me at volunteer[at]scrapexchange.org if you would like to help with the move.

-Madeline James (store manager and volunteer coordinator)

zzzzzzzz said...

Madeline, I'd love to be able to volunteer one day. Scrap really is one of the only places that I'll make such a long drive to visit.

When do you think you'll have another big volunteer day? I'll be in Charlotte on the 15th and won't be able to make it to you guys.