Best Thrift Store
Value World
They really do care about customer service at Value World. These days, that is what’s hard to find. There’s an already-been-chewed clothing store in every downtown shopping district of every city in our expansive consumer nation. Prices for leftover, barfed-on thermal underwear or had-sex-in prom dresses range from unbelievably cheap to laughably expensive. Honestly, when wading through waves of wrinkled ’70s fashion on the floor, don’t you feel like asking the local Reality Bites loony indie retailer: “Exactly whose pillbox hat do you imagine you are selling — Jackie O’s?!”
It seems many of you creative Detroiters have happened upon thrift bliss when you walked into a Value World. Can you remember when? I’ll bet classic soul music crackled nostalgically from blown radio speakers. The employees laughed grandly at inside jokes and smiled at you as they carefully pushed their movable clothing caravans to a cyan stream in the T-shirt rainbow across the wall’s horizon.
Value World (globally expanded nomenclature from Value Village) offers the best of Detroit’s unique finds. For Halloween, I located several incredible costume ideas: the ‘silent-film star’ dress was ultimately the most fantastic notion. On a paycheck basis, I race west on Nine Mile Road from Woodward to my personal favorite Ferndale location. That’s where I have typically found an incredible piece of jewelry or a “Sherilyn Fenn à la ‘Twin Peaks’” plaid wool skirt.
It’s a good feeling to shop here; drifting with friends and with purpose down the long aisles of slacks, ashtrays, lamps and boots or eyeing what others are giddily snatching for their collection from behind the pages of your soon-to-be-purchased great American 19-cent(ury) novel.
