I’ve been to a bunch of St. Vincent thrift stores, in a bunch of different states. And it is really difficult to find a straightforward list of stores, because it seems that someone can open a thrift store as sort of a franchisee.
If you check the national St. Vincent website, you will find a searchable page that gives you some results. It shows 11 stores in Illinois but I have trouble believing that this is complete as there is nothing south of Joilet.
If you check the St. Vincent Chicago website, they will claim there are only three stores: I have now been to two of them (one chronicled below).
If you check the St. Vincent Joilet website, you get a lot of overlap with the national website, but some stores are missing and others are strangely included (Addison seems to be a ways from Joilet!)
In the interest of first trying to attack the ‘big 3’ on the Chicago website, we drove way up north to Libertyville. We tried to do this last weekend but got sidetracked, hit some other stores and just went home.
Now that looks like one awfully sad bunch of records, especially given the long distance to drive for it. Would you believe that I found some stuff? I did! I found another Eddie B. record which I am delighted about, for starters. But then I found a couple really odd 10″ records. One was clearly hiphop, the other was a total mystery. I jumped on my phone and saw that it took was indeed abstract hiphop. Then I saw its value and how many people had it on their want list: that record was for sale on discogs before I even paid the $1 for it. I even gave it a listen – I understand the idea of just running with hip hop as an art medium but employing truly 0% of its aesthetic and just rhyming about nonsense doesn’t appeal to me. But hopefully I can sell it for a 1500% profit!
We stopped at Goodwill Mundelein on the way back which is still messing with my brain as I am certain they moved the record bin – I visited here almost exactly a year ago. Just a bunch of junk but jockeying for position with someone in the bin was a situation I have not encountered (in a Goodwill, at least) for so long I don’t even remember. And I am referring to the man in the purple shirt, not the little girl in the red pants. She grabbed a couple hot vinyls and went for the register before I had a chance at her scores. Damn!
