Journey to Jet Rag

Last Sunday, my family and I ventured into a jungle of buildings, people, and pollution - also known as Los Angeles. Why you wonder? All for a little vintage store called Jet Rag. When I went to China last summer, I met a girl in my tour group who was just as crazy about fashion as I was. She told me that on Sundays, this store called Jet Rag has a $1 parking lot sale in which she would buy bags of clothing either to wear or reconstruct. Now that sounds like my type of store. Ever since then I have wanted to visit that place and see what it was like. Being the bargain-shopaholic that I am, I convinced my parents to take me yesterday as a "treat" for finishing up my first year at college. I would have gone by myself, except for the fact that I am too scared to drive alone, and to LA for that matter. As a compromise, I planned that after our Jet Rag excursion we would head towards downtown fashion district and look at fabric for the curtains we had been planning on redoing for the past five years. And so at 9:30 Sunday morning we drove our beat up Nissan Maxima towards LA.

I have always considered myself a city girl, even though I don't quite live in the city. But adventuring into the metropolitian made me desire to move towards the city even more. (Or maybe it was the fact that I had been overdosing on Sex and the City lately). I sat in the front with my dad, giving him the directions I had printed from mapquest that morning. I didn't exactly know where the place was so I had these expectations that it would be located in a strip of shops and boutiques - but no, it was not so. I would have nearly missed the store if I had not seen a bunch of LA hipsters digging through piles of clothing in the middle of a shabby parking lot. I told him this is it! I was excited. As for my family, they were less than thrilled. I skipped towards the place and started digging. Didn't find anything after 2 minutes and my hope was starting to diminish. Along the wall there were these laundry carts and I thought that there was clothing there too. I went and found this really cool skirt. I was relieved that we didn't drive all the way here for a bunch of crap. Too bad I didn't quickly leave that area in time with my find because apparently it was already taken by this girl. Oops, I thought. I guess laundry carts there were like shopping carts at Target. I felt foolish, but I was determined to find some decent $1 clothing.

After another 5 minutes, I only managed to pick up a dress. My dad told me, " I think your thrift store is better than this place". And that meant a lot because for one thing, my parents hated the thrift stores. Then the store employees came over towards these five packages of 100 lb. clothing and said we will be opening these in five minutes and the other row of packages at 11:00. I saw people crowd around the packages. And in a matter of a few seconds, they were ripping apart the bags and grabbing all the clothing, even if they didn't want all of them. I see how this works now. They will be the ones that get to look through all the clothes first and pick the ones they want and throw the ones they don't want back into the pile.

30 minutes later of circling the clothing, digging on my hands and knees, I was tired and sweaty and proably sunburned. My family had found a nice bench to sit on inside the store. More packages were opened again and this time I was smart because I unleashed my inner beast and grabbed and fought over dirty clothing. And I actually managed to get some cool stuff. So after spending $10 for 10 pieces and $15 for the gas to get over there, it was well worth it. We didn't end up going to downtown. I think my parents were too tired of seeing these hipsters look like wild animals digging through smelly clothing. But I think I shall return, but next time without my family so I wouldn't feel guilty about making them wait for hours while I blissfully rummage through $1 vintage clothing.

Because I love pictures, here are some pictures of my finds :)

Funky hippy-esque top

Silk (I think) Indian Tunic/Dress. Probably a tunic, because the slits on the side are very scandalous

Pink lacey cocktail-esque dress. Planning on cutting off the sleeves which are incredibly ichy.

Stripey Sailor tunic/dress?

Pink Mexican dress. Brown patterned thing on the side is this weird turban thing that I was strangely attracted to.

White lace wedding looking dress that sadly is too small :( My mom found it for me because she said it was the cleanest/ newest looking thing she could find.

Weird super large muu-muu perfect for reconstruction

Poofy lingerie me thinks.

Dress!