Photograph by Johanna Carson
Kim Convey, left, accepts an offer from a shopper for a pile of fur. Convey and her friends cleared out their entire garage on Firebird Way on April 15.
Treasures abound during City garage sale
Event encourages re-use, recycling of unwanted items
By Sam Scott
Jordan Fox, 15, now boasts steer horns to go with his mounted deer head. The Sunnyvale resident picked up the bovine headgear for $10, rummaging through the offerings at the City Wide Garage Sale. It's going to look "real good" in his bedroom, he says as he pulls the horns out of the back of a truck stuffed with other purchases.
"That's what nice about these things," he says. "You can usually find whatever you want if you keep looking."
Making the rounds with his parents and grandmother, Fox was one of hundreds scouring the Sunnyvale streets for bargains during the two-day garage sale this weekend.
The real eager beavers hit the circuit early. Seller Kristen Miller was relieved of most of her wares at 9 a.m. before she could transport them to her mother's garage from her car parked down the street.
"I got rid of almost three-quarters of my stuff before I could even get it unloaded," she says.
More than 600 residents registered to take part in the city-sponsored spring cleaning, with more setting up shop unofficially. The addresses of participating homes crammed the front page of Saturday's San Jose Mercury News classified section, though people without a copy of the paper could do just fine. Drivers had only to round a few blocks before running into one sale or another.
Some found the selling slower than years before, though much depended on the location. Clusters of closely placed sales brought in the people more readily than lone sales.
Sunnyvale adopted the idea for a mass garage sale from the city of Cerritos, says Linda Bagneschi, public educator for the city's recycling program. It was part of an attempt to reduce flow to the city's land fill. Each year, Bagneschi says, bargain shoppers buy an estimated 229 tons of material, saving it, for the moment at least, from the dump.
Bagneschi says as important as the actual items sold is the promotion the event gives to the subject of reducing garbage.
"Our message emphasizes reuse," she says. "Bringing it to peoples' homes is a really good way to emphasize that message."
It also provided a decent lesson in capitalism and being competitive. Derek Wong, 12, kissed away the toys of childhood and netted more than $30.
"For the past two years, he was sentimental," says his mother, Nancy Leong, explaining why her son waited until this year to sell. "This year he'sinto making a profit."
He says he'll probably save the money.
For most, however, profits seemed to a far second in motivation jettisoning unwanted items. People moving into new houses or looking to make more space saw it as an opportunity to purge.
"I just want to get rid of it," Vernon Chestnut says. "We don't need it anymore."
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
