Box Camera Flashbulb AKA God Bless America, Everybody Always, Stars & Stripes Forever Etc., Etc.

Beneath the boilings of the American underbelly lie the carefully stitched jobs that no one ever wants or be in the position of having. These include burger-joint flippers, donut shop sweeper-uppers, grave-diggers, tele-market researchers, garbage pickers, beer-tenders and the pawnshop dealer and its various spin-offs; thrift store carrier and antique collector.

Behold the great outstretched arms of the pawnshop dealer, the single most responsible man in the world who accepts with no qualms every single solitary piece of unwanted Americana and turns right back around sells it to someone else. The pawnshop broker is similar in theory to the thrift store merchant, who takes unwanted bits of life and places it the shelf for sale.

The trouble with this theory however, is that there are true sharks in the water, chomping at the bit, waiting for the bucks to roll in. Antique dealers behave the same way. See something you like that’s in the crappiest condition you’ve ever seen it in? Does it have the word Beatles, Jack Kerouac or Frank Sinatra on it? Well, you can bet your bottom pant-leg that the price will shoot way up the beanstalk and out past the curb.

Pawnshop dealers however, have always been given the cold shoulder, the bad vibe, the negative stare, because of what they do and that is, something like, sell your late Uncle Harry’s 80-year banjo, when you know you should have never sold it, but you needed the money, for a price that was less than attainable.

Yes, they have their array of instruments and the usual assortment of lousy CDs of bands you’ve never heard of or like will never hear from again, mountains of pc monitors, jars of kitschy jewelry, watches by the cartful, bowlfuls of coins, medallions, diamonds, stereo equipment and boom boxes and loads and loads and loads of other American crap that no one can use anymore.

But like corporate regional bookstores, every American pawnshop has its specialty, its part that makes it a pawnshop to remember. In the South, it’s nothing but country and western crap, boots with pure cattle-driven spurs, confederate flags and lots of guns to choose from. In the Midwest, it’s a little bit of everything mixed together like one great big mish-mosh of hobo stew.

In the East, it’s buttloads of guitars and amps and drums and DJ equipment and turntables and rust buckets full of fishing gear and netting (well, maybe further than New York perhaps for that stuff). In the West, it’s relaxation time with battered sets of golf clubs and worn sunglasses and vinyl records and cassettes and just about anything else you can think of.

The pawnshop in theory is perhaps one of the greatest innovations of the past century or two. Got something you don’t want anymore? Just dump it off at pawnshop and maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get a bit of green paper for it too.

Haunting thrift stores before they became fashionable in the late part of the 20th Century was my favorite pastime, much to the chagrin to my parents and my ever-changing merry-go-round pocketful of girlfriends, who like my parents never could understand why I’d even want to buy a suit that perhaps a man had died in, old beat-up hats, when there were brand-new threads in the shops calling out to me?

Because I knew then what I always have known, that fashion is a true recycling statement. What looks good now won’t be so fantastic six weeks from now. Of the many thrift stores that are in existence now, very few, still portray the old-fashionedness of what a good thrift store is and that is, a dusty moldy-mildewy smelling, bug-infested shop that makes your pants itch after sitting on their floor for merely five minutes.

And what a panoramic view there is too. Aisle after aisle after aisle of funky porcelain mugs, plates, toasters, coffeemakers, dog-eared paperback novels, mismatched chairs, dinette sets, scratched records, loud ties, stretched brimmed hats, stained under-armed longed sleeve shirts, dresses, blouses, skirts, socks and underwear, tee shirts, moth-eaten furs, ugly art and I mean ugly portraits of children, clowns, dogs, cats, bridges and houses, tangled recording tape, bruised beds, junk jewelry, crazes and fads of past decades and if you live in a certain city, then you’ll most certainly see the mutant remains of it.

Modern-day thrift stores (in this writer’s eyes) are the new robber barons of culture. They are pristine and clean-smelling. They are given more popular names like “Strange Cargo” and “Vintage Vinyl” and “Collectors’ Choice,” names that will draw the younger and more hip-to-rich crowd in to buy their overpriced McDonaldland-style trinkets just to pay the rent.

A mere piece of plastic with the word Beatles on it, no matter what the item is, will be jacked to the max, as many of these young sharks are in it for the mere purpose of the buck, even though they soft-soap their image of selling nice vintage memorabilia to nice people. It’s all a financial gain. A numbers game. Crunch those numbers and crunch them fast.

A few months ago, I got chased out of a pawnshop by a dealer who didn’t want someone else dressed a little bit funkier than he was, to give the joint a little atmosphere. It’s not the first time and it sure won’t be the last. That old image of pawnshops being the perfect place to dump a “hot” piece of property, by a seedy-looking character apparently hasn’t shaken itself off quite yet, like a flea-bitten dog out in the rain.

Pawnshop dealers despite their appearance are much like the wealthy Wall Street brokers, always selling, never buying. Keep yourself a little stash to lie on until the heat stops leaning.

God bless America, everybody always, stars & stripes forever, etc., etc.