Sonoma Sojourn

If you ever see a lucite box like this … please pick it up for me! This is the second one I’ve gotten at a yard/rummage sale – perfect for jewelry!

I can’t resist: I drive to Oakland (only 62 miles away) to shop the Preview Day of what has to be the biggest White Elephant sale in the world – or at least in northern California. If you’re not into thrift store shopping, you probably can skip this post. If you ARE into thrift store shopping, you might want to skip this post – you don’t want to know what you missed.

Run by the Oakland Museum Women’s Board, the White Elephant sale is their only fundraising activity and has contributed over $18 million since it began in 1955 (last year, the sale raised $1.8 million alone!!!). Filling a 96,000 square foot warehouse, there are 17 departments featuring sporting goods, art, vintage clothing, books, bric a brac, linens, housewares, garden goods, furniture, rugs, jewelry, kids toys and games, stationery, accessories – and a ’boutique’ featuring finer pieces of silver, crystal, and other delectable collectibles. But nothing I read online about the sale can prepare me for what I am about to experience.

The sale begins at 10 in the morning, and I arrive in Oakland (finally … thanks to my GPS) at 9:30. It takes a while to find a place to park, but I do and walk over to where I see a line of people; obviously, they’re waiting for the sale to begin. What I don’t know until I get closer is that this is just part of the line … I walk down the block, around the corner, and down several more blocks to find the end of the line. Along the way I buy my “preview” ticket: $20 for the privilege of elbowing my way through the cavernous warehouse with thousands of others. I quickly do the math in my head: ‘x’ amount of people at $20 a head (or $15, if you purchased in advance) = a whole lot of money. No WONDER the sale produced $1.8 million last year!

I walk into the warehouse and my jaw drops – really, it does. I cannot believe what I see before me: 96,000 square feet totally filled with everything described above and more. I want to call my friend, Miki, who ‘yard sales it’ with me on Nantucket – I want to Skype her to show her what I’m looking at. She would love it here. Where do all these things come from? How long does it take to stage it all? Each department is fully packed. The book department is larger than most book stores today — the books are stacked on shelves by genre, and within each genre they are stacked alphabetically by author. I can’t believe it. The sports department features golf clubs, tennis racquets, bicycles, baseball bats, soccer balls, badminton racquets, croquet sets, surfboards, skis. Guess how many coffee makers, crock pots, toasters there are in the world? They are all here at the sale. Do you need a garden hose, bird cage, oriental rug, printer paper, file folders, piano, pony? (They actually sold a pony there one year, I understand.) The most amazing thing to me is that every single item is priced. No matter how small it is (a baggy full of paper clips, for instance), it is labeled and priced. There are hundreds of packs of playing cards — each pack has been taped and priced by one of the thousand volunteers it takes to put this sale on. Vintage clothing? Price tags of hundreds of dollars hang from beaded gowns and embellished jackets; I wonder who wore these clothes before? An actress? A socialite from the Bay Area? Walking sticks, designer shoes, silk scarves, bedspreads, scrapbooking materials, spinning globes with countries no longer in existence…no matter what you are looking for (or not), it is here at the White Elephant.

You need stamina to navigate the White Elephant. After only three hours I think I’ve seen all that I can handle, but before I can get to the “hold desk” to pick up my folding table with wicker tray ($30) and a brown carton that now holds my small lucite four-drawer box (it corrals staples and oversized plastic paperclips now, but I am buying it for only $2 to store some of the jewelry I’ve brought with me), the white artificial floral arrangement ($4) that I will put on the patio table to brighten up the backyard a bit, the blank cards from Michael’s that I will print as Valentines ($1), and three books (a kid’s biography of A.P. Giannini – founder of Bank of America/1956, Mark Bittmans’ Quick and Easy Recipes/2007, and Make It Yourself: Simple Wooden Toys/1945), I wander through the linen department and find a table runner ($6) and six pants hangers ($2) that I absolutely need.

I saunter back to the car (I cannot walk any faster) with bags over my shoulders, balancing the collapsed table and tray between cramped fingers. I’ve spent a total of $53 (there are some other things I purchased not mentioned above), plus the $20 admission fee. Plus gas money, of course. And what I learn is this: it is worth the price of admission to see just what it is I might need. Thankfully, I am in a rented home and don’t need much, if anything –  but I AM thinking about returning to the sale when it officially begins March 1 for two days … you never know – I just might need a pony by then.

Bicycles in the sports department.

You need golf balls, you say?

The Art department: framed, unframed, prints, paintings, posters.

Ladies clothing, mens clothing, designer clothing…great deals if you’re up for looking through all the racks.

This is the ‘bric-a-brac’ department, which might be another way of saying ribbons, decorations, paper, party goods, and more.

Playing cards: all sealed and marked by 1,000 volunteers. Amazing.

The best parts of “A.P. Giannini: Boy of San Francisco” are the comments that some young student added to the text of the book — cynical, funny, ‘laugh out loud’ counterpoints to the poignant story of this Italian’s rise to success. Haven’t made anything yet from the cookbook, but I’ve enjoyed thumbing through the recipes; and as soon as I get my rule, try-square, chisel, saw, plane, hammer, coping saw, sawing board, file, brace, pincers, spokeshaves, bradawl, screwdriver, glasspaper and block, brace bits, compasses, nail punch, drills, and oilstone unpacked … I will begin gathering the materials needed to make these simple wooden toys.

These actually look better in person than in this photo … and for $4 … they are FABulous!

The wicker tray lifts off the table base; the table base folds. How neat is THAT?!

I needed a diffuser. The cottage here is fine, but sometimes when I come in from outside I think it needs to smell a little fresher or spicier or something other than what it smells like (not that it smells bad). I look everywhere in town for a diffuser that doesn’t cost $100; I can’t find any in what I think is my price range and wonder what it is I’ve been missing with regard to price points and diffusers. (I’ve been spoiled by diffusers I’ve bought at TJMaxx and HomeGoods and other fine department stores, where $17 is expensive!) No matter. I drive 30 minutes to Corte Madera, halfway between Sonoma and San Francisco, to take a one-to-one course at the Apple Store on iMovie. If I get the time to practice what I learned, you’ll soon be seeing mini-movies here on the blog … except that maybe I need to upgrade my membership by a million dollars so I can post videos. I’ll figure that out later. At any rate, I hope to run into a TJMaxx or HomeGoods along the way, but I don’t … and I find myself taking a right turn into “CornerStone” on my way home from class. CornerStone is just pass the Fruit Basket — an open-market stand where you can buy lemons and avocados, fruits and vegetables of all types … bulk oatmeal, candy, rice, and nuts … and wine for $3 a bottle less than you can find it in town. CornerStone is collection of art galleries, shops, wineries and a gourmet café and market – set amidst nine acres of garden installations created by the world’s leading landscape architects, I’m about to find out. I stop into one of my favorite stores, Zipper, to look for diffusers — theirs start at $125, and I try to memorize the smell of the fragrance as I put down the bottle as quickly as I had picked it up to inhale. Really: $125 for a bottle with reeds that promise to aromatize the air for at least six months; is there a money-back guarantee? I do find a pearl ring on leather that is only $20 (it FITS my big fat fingers!!), and there is a night light that I buy: it’s a black box about 6″ x 7″ and it says ‘Love is all you need’. What I particularly love about it is that only the word ‘Love’ lights up when it’s plugged in … so I leave it plugged in all the time and am happy when I see ‘Love” lit up. I walk into the store next door to Zipper … there is a large selection of diffusers to choose from; most are substantially under $100! The woman who is on duty when I arrive is sitting at a round metal table in the corner of the store; she is cutting large heart shapes out of magazines and assembling them so that when she stitches up the center of them, they will unfold to a dimensional celebration of love for Valentine’s Day. We talk about the art she is creating, what I am looking for, why I am here in Sonoma and not in Boston.  We talk about her new kitten and litter boxes in general and Smokey, who is on my CapitalOne card. How was Smokey’s trip out on the plane? (Uneventful, thank heaven.) How did she adjust to the new environment? (Seems to be doing okay.) Is she an indoor cat? (She doesn’t want to be, and I do let her out on the porch occasionally – but only if I’m with her.) Have you been through the gardens yet? Gardens? I didn’t know there were gardens here – I thought this was just a collection of stores. I tell her not yet — I’m about to do that. It’s not true, but as soon as I say the words, it becomes true. My catholic guilt and commitment to going beyond my comfort zone assert themselves and I walk out the door and to the left and down the flagstones leading me to the Sculpture Garden.

As soon as I step through the entrance to the Garden, I thank god that I ignored my laziness to enjoy these walk-through installations. Landscape architects and designers from around the world were given the freedom to create anything from traditional gardens to modern, conceptual installations and were provided a garden parcel of approximately 1,800 square feet, a few practical considerations – and the sole directive to “Invent, inform and create beautiful and thought provoking spaces”. And so they did –  from “Garden Play” to “Small Tribute to Immigrant Workers”, from “Eucalyptus Soliloquy” to “Red Lantern”, it was an unexpected treasure to spend time amidst these artists’ interpretations under Sonoma’s brilliant blue skies.

Life is good. Especially since I write this wrapped in the fragrance of fresh cut tuberose … I admit I spent more on this  diffuser than I usually do – but a lot less than $125. And besides which (how was it that that commercial went – L’Oreal, I think?)…

“I’m worth it!”

Lemons, apples, avocados…everything costs less here than in town! Yum!

“White Cloud” – sculpted cumulus clouds (swirls of wire mesh supported by posts) with thousands of clear cut crystals ‘catching the light from morning to moonlight’.

Another view of White Cloud … one of my favorite installations.

Small Tribute to Immigrant Workers

Small Tribute to Immigrant Works — intriguing and informative.

Garden Play.

Eucalyptus Soliloquy

Eucalyptus Soliloquy: Leaves folded and pinned to formed various designs.

Close up of pinned eucalyptus leaves.

Red Lantern – homage to Chinese laborers.

The Children’s Garden — a gathering of special things about Sonoma to entertain children of all ages.

Bright birdhouses!