Hipster Heaven in downtown Salem

This is for all of the people who have commented on the picture of my kitchen or who have written asking where I got my red Formica kitchen table.

It may not be red, but this table is Formica, comes with matching chairs, and can be found in the awesome and packed downstairs basement showroom that I finally discovered the other day at Engelberg Antiks.

I actually went there because someone gave me a tip that they had chairs that would match my own table, which I inherited from my grandfather (it stood in his kitchen until it went out of style, I assume. I’ve used it for the past 10 years).

I’m still poking around, but I’m kind of startled at the awesome stuff that can be picked up in Salem  at:

Engelbert’s Antik’s
148 Liberty St NE

Encore Furniture
1198 Commercial Street NE

I will add to this list as I find new discoveries and post it as a page of its own on this site.

Sadly, the movers who brought our things to Oregon ruined much of my furniture, including three of my chairs.

We didn’t have too much when we moved to Salem, but what we didn’t bring we’ve been able to find, for the most part, in Salem’s consignment stores. We believe in buying quality products that are kind of odd and unique and which will stand the test of time.  That’s the best way I’ve found to achieve the funky aesthetic I like so much.

And since we’re in Salem, the hipsters haven’t taken all the good stuff we have locally.

Also, we are steered by our own disillusionment with consumerism and by ideas we’ve developed about our connections to stuff. One of our friends, the artist Annika Blomberg, even tore apart an old couch and “repurposed” it to make useful art–the idea would perhaps seem only moderately interesting if she weren’t so freakin amazing at making things.

It’s the most… wonderful day… of the week…

Picture it: It’s Tuesday morning and we’re at Tuesday Morning. The sounds of Duran Duran accompany us down the aisles — row upon row of things your grandmother really wants for Easter:  Garden gloves, lobster butter warmers, 2-in.-long shag carpets, bobble-headed garden mushrooms, European-spun hand towels, Murano glass centerpiece dishes, and one four-foot tall Francis of Assisi.

My husband has been pestering me to go there for weeks.

Since he got Tuesdays off, it has quickly been morphing into the best day of the week.  We wake up slow, we lounge around, we eat out during the day (Word of Mouth Bistro, more to come on that), we read The Watchmen, and today, we went to the nationwide chain Tuesday Morning. It’s corporate philosophy may be to offer high-end, quality goods at rock-bottom prices, but what it really represents is a mid-day treasure hunt, as random as a trip to the thrift store — if thrift stores sold unopened Cuisinart garlic presses.

Bargains can be very sexy. But in a turn of events sure to be interesting to all scholars of gender studies, I am a get-in-get-out kind of shopper and my husband likes to poke around — for hours.  I had cased the place after 12 minutes but he needed another 55 to find what he wanted.

a mop
a package of multi-colored tissue paper
a gigantic ceramic pot
gardening gloves

“Why do you even want to come to this place,” I asked him.

“They’ve got cool stuff to look at.”

The cash register rings us up and he pulls out his check card.

“Darling, don’t you want anything for yourself?”

“No, that’s okay,” he said. “We don’t need anymore junk in the house.”

Desperately Seeking: Samoas

I was a terrible Girl Scout. For one, I only made it through half a year of Brownies (younger GS group) because I kept forgetting to go (my mom worked and I was supposed to remember to go after school once a month).  I didn’t go camping until I was out of college.

But if there’s any part of my childhood that I look back on with regret, it is not having really been involved in an organization like the Girl Scouts. Granted, they’ve made some missteps in recent years (offering shopping badges if girls participage in a “retail adventure” at Limited Too). But in a world where everyone should be conscious and leery of brands, the image of three wavy green scout heads  remains one that I can believe in.

I believe in stuffing my face with Samoas.

I got five boxes this year (Samoas, Thin Mints and Tagalongs) from the daughter of the Salem family that has adopted us since about a month before our move here.  That was yesterday. Today, there are four boxes.

According to the Cookie Locator (an idea whose time has come, if there ever was one), the Salem Girl Scouts are out in force selling cookies this weekend at Fred Meyer and Hollywood Video.  Like the Cadbury egg quarter, and marshmellow peep month, this is indeed a special time of year.

Make way for Trader Joe’s

I generally try to shop close to home — the farm stands on Silverton Road are my newest favorite haunt — but I can’t help driving the 35 minutes to the Lake Oswego Trader Joe’s to get the items you can buy cheaper there: brie, Tasty Bite Indian, pine nuts, real dark chocolate.

But whatever you do, DO NOT GO AT 3:00 p.m. on a Thursday. That’s when all of Lake Oswego’s  little old ladies in their long coats and $100 haircuts flood the story for a lean, mean event of grocery cart derby. Yesterday, I got edged out of produce by a woman making a beeline for the packaged endive and another holding her ground — for ten minutes!–equivocating over parsley (“But my recipe calls for flat parsley, is this parsley flat?”).

Or, if you’re a fan like me, you can join the growing legions of Salemites who are signing petitions to bring Trader Joe’s to Salem.  According to a recent news report a move to Salem is unlikely for the high-end food specialty store. But you can’t ignore the madding crowd for long. Word on the street is that the Lake Oswego site is expanding into the space next door (former furniture store) next May.