Thrifting Boise, Part 1

I am pooped, having spent the last two days either in a car or on a plane. (I left Nashville at 6:55 AM on Wednesday morning, bound for Boise; had a two hour layover in Las Vegas - a city I loathe - where I came to the conclusion that everyone there looked like they were from Nashville. When I related this to P. Cole, she made the very astute connection to this observation and Music City's second most-commonly used nickname: NashVegas.)

The flight was actually pretty quick, and I got into town by 2:30. Marie's car was waiting at the airport for me, so I was able to jump in, fire up the GPS, and head straight to the nearest Savers, the Western version of our Value Village franchise back East (check out the colors and font of the sign!).

I'm a big fan of the Savers chain for several reasons, but chiefly because of size. They're huge - like, mega-supermarket huge. The West Fairview location I hit in Boise was no exception and I took a good hour-plus to get through it. The clothes were a bit expensive - dresses were mostly $7 or $10; jackets were about the same - though I did manage to score a few jewels, in including a painted silk caftan with an Asian design and a few pairs of shoes, including a pair of black suede boots with beaded rodeo riders on the side (sounds stupid; looks cool).

Three storefronts up the strip mall there was another one: Idaho Youth Ranch Thrift, a non-profit store that I am assuming receives a good bit of dead stock in addition to their usual mix of clothing donations. To wit: the large number of stretch minis and double-breasted peplumed jackets that still had the circa 1980s Contempo Casual (!) tags hanging from them. I got one of the former, two of the latter, as well as a white lace Fredricks of Hollywood brand dress with a full tiered skirt just like the hot pink one I have hanging in Fanny's right now! I love finding twinkie dresses.

After about an hour there (I also got some totally cute plastic wedge Kenny's sandals, size 6ish, that have never been worn; they'll be in the store next week), I hit the last store in the West Fairview thrift trifecta: Deseret Industries. I remember going to one of these in Arizona a few years ago, and loving how organized and well-priced everything was. I also remember thinking it must be a totally Western chain, seeing as it was called Desert Thrift and all. (Missed that last e, yo.) Marie just told me that it's LDS-operated, which makes sense considering that there's a huge Mormon population here.

All I can say is those guys sure know how to run a thrift store: I don't think I've ever been in a thrift that was as ship-shape and pin-neat as this store. I got a few things: a pair of $3 red suede ankle boots with little buckles on the side (my size: yay!), some gold Springalators and a pair of vintage regulation Boy Scout shorts.

After that, I headed to watch Marie play frisbee in gorgeous Ann Morrison Park. Her team is called Isis; they have wings on the back of their T-shirts:

I have much more to report - and many more pictures of FABULOUS booty I got today. But we need to get going or we'll be late to meet up with my old grad school buddy Greg Hahn, who lives here. It's been over 10 years! I'm excited.

FYI: You can read more about my shopping adventures as they happen if you sign up to get my Twitter reports. How you do that, I know not. But looking up my name is as good a place to start as any!