Stakeout: Yooralla Bargain Shop, Carlton

This op, located at 135-136 Elgin Street Carlton, was canned in the Treasure Hunter’s Guide (THG) way back when in 2005. I can’t remember exactly what it said, but it was something along the lines of ‘you won’t find any treasure here’.

Now, I’m not sure if they just went on a bad day or matters have improved in the last three years (aside: do you sometimes refer to the THG and think – ‘hang on, this was written three years ago – can it be trusted?’ I do) but this op ain’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.

For a start, it’s quite sizable. Second, prices are flat (all skirts $5, shirts $5, long dresses $10 which isn’t too bad when you consider that they’re paying inner-city rents). Third, the stock is fairly dense – dense enough to warrant a sign on the front pleading local good Samaritans not to donate any more ladies’ and children’s clothes.

True, a lot of the clothes here are your typical Millers Fashion Club/Temt/Katies garb, but there were a few gems; some 70s dresses, an original men’s army-green wool-lined Parka (as in, the old brand of coat ‘Parka’ not some ol’ piece of crap that gets called a parka because the name of the brand has become a word for ‘waterproof overcoat’), a couple of lovely women’s overcoats (one with a lining that looked like a tartan woollen blanket WHERE DO I SIGN etc) and a pair of 80s silver high heels that were, to my consternation, a size 6.5.

But it’s not just the clothes: the book section is awesome. They seem to have a whole swag of 50s and 60s hardbacks with fantabulous lurid colours (my favourite was called ‘The White Rajah’ and had an oddly acidic looking giant peacock gracing the cover), as well as a number of decent contemporary/classic paperbacks (i.e. not your typical Dan Browns and Clive Cusslers).

There’s also a fair amount of glassware/crockery, and a room devoted to manchester which held some promising-looking lace curatains.

On the downside, it’s picked over by hip young daddi-os all the time. While I was in the shop, I overheard two separate conversations that ended with ‘You wanna go to Brunswick Savers? Yeh, lessgo there’.

In the end, I bought a late 1950s/early 1960s poly-cotton (more cotton than poly…which proves it wasn’t the 70s…) shirt for the beau. It’s rad. It has a pattern of little painted sailing boats, it’s mint green…it’s about two sizes too big, but this can be fixed.

Overall, I think the THG wrote this place off waaay too quickly – for an inner city op, it’s not too shabby. If you’re in the general Carlton/Brunswick/Melb uni area, I recommend giving it a go. And if a new edition of THG comes out, it’ll be interesting to see if they’ve changed their tune.

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