Although we hadn’t intended on going to a bookstore we happened by this one between where we parked and where were trying to go and being the nerds we are… in we went!
I cannot tell you how long it has been since I have been in a used bookstore. I am SO happy that some still exist in this eBook world! I was initially struck by the title of the place which seemed to be a pun. Grey matter being the areas of brain where we store information. Plus, the front window had some really odd books in it. Just bizarre.
We walked in and I thought being a college, er university, town this was most likely a textbook swap but alas it seemed to have a bit of everything. It wasn’t enormous but it was lovely! Chairs were randomly dispersed, excited university students prattled in the narrow aisles about buying a book in French for a friend learning French. It was sweet! There was a poster on the wall commemorating Edward Gorey, a rare William Burroughs piece behind glass, and even an old hardcover copy of Poe. And the place smelled of old books. A cart at the front had $1 finds.
I sat at the back of the store cooling off for a bit. That’s where I found a whole section dedicated to gender studies and another on black voices. I skimmed the gender books as it’s interesting to me, giggling at Sapphic Slashers; Sex, Violence, and American Modernity. What a title! I may have bought it but it had no tags, neither did the book my companion picked up. I didn’t see any prices labelled anywhere except for the $1 cart up front and being in a wealthy city but with a modest budget none of us really wanted to ask but we did enjoy the place and I would recommend it if you’re in town and looking for a weirdly specific reference book to something on the unusual side!
This is another odd entry as I don’t do too many stores but there was a sandwich board out front saying it was the only independently owned art supply store in the entire state of Connecticut, so I had to go in and check it out.
This was another modestly sized store but with an eager staff who immediately asked if we needed help with anything. The front was dedicated to little novelty gifts like pencils with funny sayings printed on them relating to astrological signs, funny erasers and whatnot. A bulletin board at the entrance was COVERED in missing cat posters, with a few smatterings of services offered by local artists.
Inside there was a section devoted to every hobby you can imagine – painting, sculpting, model building, framing, diorama and train set building, sketching, wood carving, you name it! And their prices seemed reasonable with a surprisingly large variety of items to choose from. I’d definitely shop here if I lived nearby. I have 300 hobbies and all of them are expensive and time consuming. At least this place made it all look so fun!
So yeah – shop local, support indie, this place is a little gem!
We went to the Spring Brimfield Antique Show on the day of its opening and I meant to post this not long after but you know… I’ve been on the go for over a month now and crashed pretty fucking hard. Tonight, I am feeling a little back to myself so I am going to regale you with all the delightful weirdness we found.
First off I must say I took A TON of photos with my phone, only a portion of which I have been able to upload. UGH. It’ll have to do! We arrived at noonish, I think, and paid $20 to park at the church having learned our lesson for trying one of the ten dollar lots on an earlier visit. Today I had two companions, one which had never been before which is always double the fun. All three of us were immediately overwhelmed. This place is HUGE. We were there all day and made it to the back of one of the lots but probably only saw MAYBE a 4th of what there was to see and some of the vendors told us there were still whole fields not even open yet!!
It proved to be a fantastic day for haunted dolls, terrifying carousel horses, blasphemy, antique titties, mounds of racist bullshit for every minority, a random smattering of Nazi regalia, lots of weird iron banks, MARBLES, and whimsy galore. And the vendors themselves were often very sweet! We ended up getting tips to find free water and bathrooms from one adorable hippie couple towards the end and we didn’t even buy anything from them.
Of course, the food trucks were also out which made keeping myself hydrated extra easy! The fresh squeezed lemonade is an outrageous $5 a cup but goddamn is it good! We also had some bomb pulled pork. But that’s all besides the point.
We had spent the day mostly just weaving between the unbelievably wholesome where we “awed” and the over the top inappropriate which we giggled like 12-year-olds and made equally obscene jokes about. At least one of the vendors was amused I was joining in this game – I don’t care I have tits, I also have a sense of humor.
“I don’t know if this Jesus is in pain or orgasming.” “He looks Catholic, so both.” [Sorry, not sorry, I’ve seen too much church sponsored torture porn to answer this in any other way.]
So. Many. Dolls. Swarms of them! Sailors, mammies, porcelain, drawers of doll parts, steam punked horror doll lamps… and clowns… I mean quite a few things here looked proper haunted including some of the furniture and there was so much furniture this time around! We agreed it’d be super fun if we had money to come here and just furnish a whole damn house. They even had a booth of house plants! And they were GORGEOUS and healthy. So many succulents! One was over $600.
Of course, one of my favorite spots was well to the back where there weren’t many people, an artist was tending his forest of 10-foot-tall metal mushrooms which swayed in the wind and made my heart just go pitter patter. They were over a grand a piece but maaaan… the whimsy! I felt like I was in Wonderland! Similarly, a metal artist near the road had some really impressive beasts made of nuts and bolts and whatnot including a life size moose head. Again, if I had that kinda money… *heart eyes*
I did end up with a print from a local artist of a bunny in an overcoat. It was so cute I couldn’t leave it there! I did leave a bunch of marbles. They were everywhere, without price tags, which is why none came home with me. That and one packet literally said they were pickaninny marbles and had a super racist little logo. My melanin blessed companion made sure to point them out, as well as all the mammies and no colored allowed signs, in part I think to see the response of the vendors which is indeed an extra layer to this game and makes it even more amusing.
Meanwhile, my other companion has become somewhat jaded to all the Nazi memorabilia but not completely. He still finds it fascinatingly distasteful. Who would buy this?! He asks that a lot. Not me. That’s some bad mojo there.
Anyway, enjoy the photo dump of all the weirdness. Due to AdSense rules I couldn’t keep in any of the antique titties. Or weird erotic fanart. Sorry.
This wasn’t the first time I have been to the Hannah Grimes Gallery, but it is probably the first time I have blogged about it and definitely the first time I have spoken about it since they got a large expansion to their space!
I always liked this place because of the community feel it has to it. It is stocked almost entirely (or possibly entirely) with arts and goods made by local artisans. This means that although much of it remains familiar – like the greeting cards and various food stuffs, much of changes over time as new artists move in. So, there is always something to see or check out and I love this.
Some of the art is very accessible to those of lower means such as the greeting cards and soaps allowing even sorry sods like me to support this whole endeavor. However, if you are someone with means this place has a lot more to offer – glassware, ceramics, wood sculptures, paintings, metal sculptures, lovingly crocheted plushies, quilts, you name it! And a lot of it is GORGEOUS. They even had the swankiest bat house I have ever seen. Those are going to be some spoiled bats!
Keene is a wonderful town to just walk main street indulging in the gallery, a chocolatier, a bakery, a candy shop, lots of proper eateries, a theater, jewelry shops, clothing stores, you name it! And being a college town it’s also very art friendly and busting with charm. The perfect way to spend a summer day if you enjoy walking a city while still being in the country!
Since we were already in Maine I decided to take this last opportunity to check out a different fish shop in the hopes of finding another betta or maybe something else interesting I could keep in a jar for a few days before going home. Alas even though they had the best betta rack I have yet encountered (with each pen containing it’s own plant) it seems they were just about sold out with only two left. No worries I was also here to take a gander at everything else.
The freshwater fish were different than the ones I was used to seeing and all seemed very healthy. I really liked the Diamond Tetras! And they had a lot of plants to choose from. Sadly, I already either had all of them or have killed them. This hobby may be getting a bit out of control… *whistles*
They also had a saltwater section with a wonderful large variety of small and medium coral frags at very reasonable prices as well as some fish – mostly clowns. After poking at these we made our way to the reptile room and had fun trying to find what was in each enclosure as these too were full of plants and hiding nooks. They had some snakes, a gorgeous and healthy-looking chameleon, and some adorable frogs and geckoes. All very healthy and happy looking.
I may not have found what I wanted on this day but I definitely keeping the info for this place for the next time I’m up here! I was impressed!
I really hadn’t intended to go to any more conventions but when I brought this one up to my usual travel companion he thought it’d be a fun vacation so off we went to the boonies of Maine to see what was up in the big weird world of cryptozoology.
We got the two-day VIP tickets – because if you’re going to make a vacation of it you might as well! We showed up a little early and had to kill some time wandering for a bit while the hosts tried to figure out how to admit people. Some of the vendors were already set up so we tried walking around and looking at their goods first. There was a lovely wire artist at the door with all sorts of really cool pieces. I asked her how long it took to make them and she said about two days on the smaller ones. I wanted to give her encouragement but I knew whatever she was asking for these was too rich for my blood and instead of being insulting I never asked what they were going for. She was the only vendor that I think made no sales because of this and I felt that. I’ve been that table that’s misfitted for the venue and has goods too fine for whatever is going on. It sucks.
Next to her we found a crochet artist with all sorts of cryptid plushies and dear god were they adorable. Ended up with a tiny mothman keychain from this vendor. I figured those would go like hotcakes. Another artist had the center of the room and was doing caricatures – presumably of patrons with their favorite cryptid. The examples he had on display were rather cute, he even included one with a lot of muppets which had Nigel from Farscape hidden on there as well. I had to laugh. The rest of the room contained A LOT of the more usual items – stickers, car decals, DVDs of bigfoot documentaries, and sooo many books. My thing is to be supportive of local authors so I held myself together to say I’d be back tomorrow for some books and whew, did I ever. Came back with a haul! On all sorts of cool topics, some on hauntings and new places to go others on cryptids and weird happenings.
However the most fun was probably the reptile rescue who was letting people pet their animal ambassadors. They had a few decently big snakes, still growing for sure, a grumpy tortoise (who I could really empathize with) a skink, and a tegu. We took turns holding them all. The snakes were CRUISING, the skink was so relaxed he was limp as a ragdoll which kinda freaked me out a little bit, and the tegu, oh my god the tegu… I wanted to steal. She just burrowed into my sweater giving me a huge bear hug and FELL ASLEEP on me. God damn I love giant cuddly lizards. I’ve wanted one since I was a teenager but you know… their enclosure requirements must be enormous! This one was already maybe 1/3rd to half the size she’d be some day and that was plenty big enough! Plus the laws keep changing from state to state. Honestly, I was a bit surprised to see tegus here because of that.
After passing my lizard back to the next person we went on our way. There’d be a pizza dinner with a celebrity in the field at every table. We ended up with a comic book writer. I wish I remembered his name but I guess he did a bunch of Scooby Doos and some other neat things. He seemed very pleasant as did the couple who sat across from us who had come up here all the way from Pennsylvania! They had matching septum piercings which I thought was unique and also bought one of the mothman plushies. So we bonded on that as we ate our pizza. They had ordered 57 boxes and 32 liters of soda. I was accused of counting them but no, I was just eavesdropping when I came across this factoid.
The big event however was a viewing of Big Fur which was a documentary about the creation of the hyper realistic bigfoot sitting in the corner. This is what set the gears off in my head. I had NO IDEA there was a whole subset of taxidermists who are now doing mock mounts of extinct or otherwise undocumented animals like this bigfoot but with real fur from other animals. This particular bigfoot was made with the hair from highland cattle and the artist who created him also did a mock panda bear that looked SO REAL. Like I would think it absolutely was a panda if I didn’t know better. The reason this was inspiring to me is because I have been telling myself for years that I have enough hobbies and I do not need to get into taxidermy and be one of those weirdos lugging off dead raccoons found on the highway…. but the idea of making completely different animals out of those pelts?! You could make a goddamn unicorn! Or a snallygaster…
The rest of the audience seemed more emotionally invested in the surprise romantic aspect of the film which involved a rather messy love… square… Triangle was not the right option. Honestly, I felt that was it’s own thing and felt weird to be included but you know.. you do you. The director talked about it a little bit and we had fun with it.
The next day there was more vendors and a ton of lectures that ranged from the silly to the serious. I had no idea that loggers were… off their nuts. The amount of bizarre cryptids in logger lore is insane. Now I had loggers in my family back in the day and I feel like a lot of these are drunken big fish kinda stories but still – what the hell were these men on?! And the names of these things! I wish I could remmeber them – they would have put Dr Suess to shame.
Another lecture told us all about cougar sightings in Somerset county and how someone in Connecticut had run one over that had wandered here from thousands of miles away. I have heard stories of big cats my entire life and just thought it was a fact cougars lived here. Apparently not. The state of Maine does not recognize a current breeding population and they are therefore cryptids. The department of wildlife states cougars were functionally extinct from hunting in Maine in the late 1800’s with the last being shot in the 1930’s.
By the time the HP Lovecraft guy came up, who I’d seen before, the heat in the room and my lack of sleep previous was conspiring to land me in a coma. I may have nodded off for most of that one despite trying not to — to the point of going cross eyed.
Luckily there was an intermission where we could go out and eat at a taco truck parked outside. I tried their veggie tacos and they were the bomb. And the people were so sweet. I got a lot of compliments on my hair, pants, and purse, and was tracked down twice to see if I was the owner of the sunglasses left were I was sitting on the grass – but the sunglasses were there before me.
As we went back in we were treated to another lecture from the guy hosting the event who was telling us the cryptozoology museum was moving from its current spot to a new much larger home in Bangor and that this was also the last convention to be held in Portland for the same reason.
One of the last speakers was my favorite, it was the woman who runs a blog called Cryptozoology Facts. She seemed delightfully neaurospicy and informed everyone she was nervous but she did a good job telling us about all the bonkers cryptids she had come across and the fact her favorites were all seen only once and included a winged clam. I had to agree with her the sheer weirdness of that one would make it a favorite for me too. We’d talk to her a little bit afterwards as she offered a gift to anyone who liked and reposted her FaceBook post on the event. It was a bigfoot magnet which will now be going on my fridge…
Anyway, we had an awesome time – learned a ton about local folklore and mythology, got to speculate on what’s actually out there, and met some pretty nifty people. All and all it was a great time to be had by all and I came home with sooo many books it’s a bit ridiculous but at least they’re all signed!
Our last antique store of the day was East Coast Props and Antiques which was a nice way to round out the day. It was much smaller than the other two places but I think it had a lot of charm. It even was selling bundles of sage just in case you were in the market for buying something haunted. It’s the little things that show how much you appreciate your customers.
My companion was happy to have found not just a few straight razors but a sharpening rock and a strap to go with them. Late 1800’s and well loved. I on the other hand was SUPER tempted by a tiny $16 teddy bear who was practically tatters and rags. He was both adorable and potentially cursed. What’s not to love?! Only reason I passed on him is I am still spending most of my free time battling asshole mice who keep eating all my cloth items. Maybe not the best environment for a teddy bear who is already only barely holding on to life.
The rest of the shop wasn’t without charm containing one of the weirdest vases I’ve ever seen adorned with cherubs with weird facial expressions and dubious intentions. There was also a disturbingly buff Saint Peter statue and a distressing little ceramic of a boy sitting on a clown (fireman?) lap that just seemed… off. Mostly because of the expressions on each’s face.
Finally, there was a toddler sized rocking horse on a high shelf pleading people not to sit on it…. WOW. I thought this was a lovely little shop myself even though it was on the smaller side. I felt it had a lot of personality.
Our second antique store of the day was Antiques at Edgerly Farm and it was on the swanker side, although certainly not as steep as the antique stores we have seen in parts of Connecticut! There were a number of cherubs about that I am sure someone would have loved. I however find the idea of a winged toddler a bit terrifying. Just WHY? Of all the things you could give wings to… A TODDLER?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
Not to be outdone there was a very expensive looking ceramic clown in the window which was just as jarring on the nerves. I was impressed by their wall of old tools. Something about it made me happy. It was a good display! I also really adored the ornamental wood stove.
As usual the attic had the more affordable and at times bizarre options the most unique of which was a birdhouse made from a stiffened denim glove. I also found a book called The AIDS Hoax from when AIDS was deadly proving that idiots have always existed in every generation. There’s a certain comfort in that.
Anyway, this shop may not have been as impressive as the last but it wasn’t underwhelming by any means. Definitely worth a checking out if you’re in the area or antiquing anyway.
We had decided to go to Maine to attend the Cryptozoology Convention and in the process we decided to take the opportunity to hit a few antique stores during the long drive north. Route 1 Antiques in Hampton Falls NH (not to be confused with Route 1A Relics in Ellesworth Maine) was the first of three we would check out on this day.
This was a shop that was clearly situated in a repurposed old farmhouse and upon walking in I felt it was a place that was a little rich for my blood. All I saw was well maintained display cases. But there was a shop dog working as a door buzzer and being that she was rather cute I settled in. This first part of the store was indeed a little much for me. They even had a super realistic sculpture of a hawk that I thought was taxidermy! The keep was excited to talk to us about it saying it was a rare piece and told us about the artist. I love art and supporting independent artists buuuut I don’t think I’ll ever have the money to pay for proper rich people art! Luckily this place also had a basement and an attic which were easier on the old wallet.
The basement was neat in that it still had this crazy old fireplace in it but otherwise there wasn’t too much interesting down there for us. The attic however was filled with toys for all ages starting with the mandatory Howdie Doody memorabilia which is much beloved by the Silent Generation and scares the ever lovin’ bejesus out of the rest of us. They also had this primo haunted marionette doll that was out for my own heart, a “Ken doll with prosthetics” which I am pretty sure was the Million Dollar Man, some Rock em’ Sock em’ Robots, and even a few things from my generation including a Star Wars ship and an original Optimus Prime with real metal parts! So I’m told by my companion. His excitement was adorable. Sorry to say I wasn’t allowed to watch many cartoons, TV, or movies, growing up, transformers among them. My mother thought I should be spending my time playing in the dirt. This has resulted a reverence for nature and a profound lack of cultural reference points.
This place was cute. I definitely would say it’s worth checking out if you like antiques of all price ranges. Or toys. So many toys.
Since we were practically right next door to Bass Pro Shop while attending the food show we decided to stop by afterwards. This place was HUGE. Everything you could possibly want for camping, fishing, hunting, and what-have-you. All surrounded on all sides by impressively realistic looking taxidermy. And a life size whale floating down from the ceiling. Why? No idea. I thought whaling was illegal in these parts. Maybe a wink and a nod to local history.
In any event I enjoyed creeping through the cast iron aisle and daydreaming about having a four-wheeler with an attached snowplow. I wonder if they work well… And of course, there was fun to be had looking at the giant tank of edible fish. (I don’t know how else to word that. I’m not big on fishing.) As well as a swarm of delightful turtles, one of which was precariously positioned atop another like Yurtle the Turtle, all four feet just dangling in the air, helplessly stuck, the turtle below it just ignoring the situation, probably trying to teach the other one a lesson. It was an entertaining moment.
Anyway… if you happen to live in or near Boston and need to buy a bunch of camping, fishing, or hunting supplies this place is pretty much it. They also had paint guns for some reason.
