Two tips:
Senate Resale Shop/Detroit Antiques Market, on the I-75 service drive near Cass Tech. YOu ma need to call ahead, their hours aren't that regular.
The Eastern Market Antiques store.
We've found super cool stuff at both.
My Eames chair story of woe: My parents used to own an Eames chair. When they were selling their house I asked where it went because I wanted it. Know where? CHURCH RUMMAGE SALE. Not even THEIR church.
Also, my father in law found a really cool midcentury table by the side of the road. He kept it in their basment. When we moved into our house we asked for it (they'd offered it to us before but we didn't have the space). He'd sold it to some guy for like $10. I saw the same table in an RO antique store for $50. Mind you, they keep trying to pawn off all their super ugly Early American furniture on us, but the midcentury modern table they sold. SIGH.
It is true talent to take someone else's 'junk' and make it look fantastic. I'm sure you possess this, as you've had lots of practice.
I don't possess this talent, and therefore shop at Crate and Barrel. I'm jealous.
I have lived outside of Detroit my whole life and have never been to the stores mention in the above comment! Thanks AmyinMotown!
I'd love to see a picture of the $5 chair.
"This fire in his brain and in his belly obscures the ugliness of where he lives. He is still hungry for his future. Thread counts do not matter. All he needs is a bed to fuck and dream in."
Beautiful. This post really made me appreciate where I am right now in my life. It's nice to have a reason to look around and be more present. (That is reason enough to finally comment... love your blog.)
The junkin' escapade that nearly endangered my marriage was the time I bought a salvaged vintage staircase for $20 at the local Habitat ReStore (it stands horizontally and underside-out in my LR; I use it as a kind of display shelf).
When I bought it, I didn't even think about the dimensions or heft of the thing; I just chirpily had the clerks mark it as sold and came back the next day with my husband and the minivan. The crazy thing BARELY fit after 2 torturous hours of heaving and manuvering. I am still paying off my moral debt on that one, one BJ at a time.
volkswagen furniture tetris is a game I know far too well.
I can so identify with this post. I look back at those pics of earlier days with a little bit of fondness. In some ways things were just easier then. But then again it is nice to have the time and the $$ to have and do nicer things. I especially don't miss sharing one tiny bathroom or the shower that gave you a slight shock if you touched the frame just right. We never did figure that one out. Or the house that had mold growing up the wall and on our leather shoes in the closets. Good times.
how do you find that stuff for so cheap. they have it fixed here in l.a. that even the obvious knock-offs are insanely priced...lucky you!!!!!!
we were looking through old pix a few days ago and were pretty thrilled that we were cool enough post-college to have royal blue walls with orange and blue velvet furniture in our living room. we also realized how many pictures we took of each other under the influence of something, and with accompaning paraphernalia. idiots.
our taste has tempered a bit in our old age, but boy do i miss the days when good interior design was the many empty wine, beer and liquor bottles you had on your tables and window sills. i'm still not a big fan of rent-a-center decorating, but lord almighty am i happy to hear that you have big lots in detroit!
p.s. we still have the velvet furniture in our basement. i won't get rid of it, i love it too much and it has too many memories!
Great post. I remember that period of my life with fondness, too. But don't let all of that guilt you've inherited get you down, Dutch. Having an appreciation for mid-century modern design is nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, remember that it was originally designed for the masses.
It's not like you're living in some McMansion in Livonia and driving a Hummer or something.
Just be thankful that you can still find Eames chairs for $5 dollars in Michigan. You can't find anything like that in California anymore without paying ridiculous prices - even in obscure, back-country junk shops.
I am still in that period of "ok let's just get the rent paid, screw design"... but we live in a house that came furnished. so it's odd because half the furniture is really nice (the stuff that came with the house)... you know, crate and barrel type stuff, not original, but still nice, comfy furniture... and then the other half is random crap from craigslist, clothes all over the floor, hand-me-downs, and dishes stacked in the sink. I sometimes wonder if I will ever really care enough to have the clean, beautiful, creative house that I want... and then I wonder, is that really what I do want, or do I like the freedom of having a house that I can mess up?
either way, I think you should frame the photo of you and wood and hang it in your bedroom.
Funny that you mention a Klimt poster.. I'm reminded of an article in The New York Times about people whose apartments ruin their chances at a decent love life.
"I now have more chairs than friends."
That made me laugh.
My friend Jon used to count the number of girls he went home with after the bar that had this poster hanging in their apartment, and tell us all via email the next day. I can't even tell you how high this number got, but everyone involved should be ashamed. For different reasons.
It is very satisfying to be at the point in life where your major worries are superficial. It doesn't mean you're taking anything for granted. Enjoy it.
And for you Californians wondering how to get Eames and Wakefield furniture for cheap? Luck and knowing where to look is key. It's all in the creative search and not expecting to just go shop for it and find it. Dumpster diving and garbage picking. Garage sales yield some, but the collectors get there first. I lived in LA and now in suburban Detroit, and there's the crazy pricing here on that stuff in stores, as well. So I'm sure Dutch has the cheap man's gift of good shit sonar.
Sometimes it's seeing someone using old Eames armshell chairs as patio furniture and asking if they'd sell them; Wood's friend once saw a bunch of factory workers taking a break sitting on eleven vintage shells and asked them if she could buy them; they told her she could have them if she brought them something else to sit on, so she traded them for $30 worth of folding chairs. I once found one at an antique mall in the back where someone was storing rabbit food ($5). I don't even bother looking in eastern Michigan. Because it was all made in western Michigan there is a glut of it and for years very few people cared about any of it. Some of my best finds have been from guys who worked at the Herman Miller factory who squirreled away stuff for years that they'd find just sitting around or about to get thrown out. I know a guy who has all kinds of Eames and Nelson prototypes that the company just threw away.
Great post, fellow junkshoppe aficionado. My husband and I are still bummed we couldn't figure out how to ship home the unbelievable, massive Arts & Crafts dining table and chairs we found for a song at a warehouse in Maquoketa, IA...this place also had several huge 1890's ornately carved saloon bars, complete with gaslights and huge mirrors, for like $10K, but we were tempted. 
We now channel this lust to our local garage sales which, thanks to the aging tighwads in our area, are rich with underpriced goodies. Sadly, an estate sale right on our street was run by the decedent's evil 40-something son from California, who was trying to unload everything at full eBay markup. The hubster offered $15 for a pile of pristine old board games, and the dude said no, he wanted $25 EACH, and he'd "rather give them away for free to a CHILD who will PLAY with them, or put them in the GARBAGE" rather than sell them cheap to us. Right. We went home, then returned to go through the garbage that night...no dice.
Oh, I'm all about the chairs too. It's ridiculous that I don't know enough people to come over and sit in them.
Sweeter still: of a time when Juniper can paw through your garage, pulling out the pieces she rode alongside as a child, and will revisit whilst eating ramen and believing for a few more years in her own originality.
Also, just a note. I might have missed if there was a reason behind this, but my favorite Sweet Juniper book (the Alphabet one) is missing from your Press section.
What the?? Am I the only one that wants to see the PICTURES you mention?? Come on, man, share the vintage Wood and Dutch!!
Your past is my present. I live in the same 3 pairs of jeans and just rotate t-shirts, unable to buy new clothes until I graduate in May. My boyfriend & I watch HGTV and dream of what it'll be like to one day own a home. I can't wait to get to where you are now. I picture it every day. Thanks for reminding me that this is just a stage we all have to go through, and that one day I'll look back and miss this.
So many stories I could share... Like the beige couch my husband inherited when he moved out, the one with loud print of birds on tree limbs - that got first a) shot at when it was carried outside as a place to sit and drink with his 3 roomies and then later b)demolished by the dog. And how we used to refer to our part-hand-me-down, part-thrift-shoppe, part-Pier-One-When-It-Was-Cheap style as "Nouveau Pauvre"...
Truly in those days, decoration meant a shitload of interesting foliage in cheap terra cotta pots, sitting on bricks-and-boards bookshelves. With the double-papasan couch in the living room. Covered in dog hair. 
My tastes have changed with money, but seriously, I still have a huge hankering for thrift store interesting and unusual, as well as vintage linens and OH MY GOD I WISH I HAD 5 FOOT LETTERS IN MY HOUSE!!!
I so had to laugh at Sarah B's comment. I HAVE THAT POSTER, that Chat Noir one. It's small and hidden behind an antique cabinet right now, but I've always had a deep fondness for it. Call me blase'...
And, lastly, I have shoved 7 pieces of CHEAP wrought iron fencing, 2 antique pie shelves, 2 suitcases, a lamp, several mid-century pottery bowls, a bag of linens, a CHIMINEA (for Chrissake!) and my mother and myself into a Miata with the top down. Oh, and one rootbeer float purchased at a DQ along the way home from West Texas.
I forgot about the papasan chairs. oh, so many papasan chairs I have known. . .
I always thought you were either born with the ability to make your surroundings lovely and interesting, or you weren't. My sister was -- even her dorm room was comfortable and interesting. Me on the other hand, I love to be in thoughtfully arranged places, but I don't seem able to create them for my own life. I think I'm just overly practical, or maybe lazy. But this gives me hope. I would really like to take the time and make the effort to make my home nice -- it is such a gift to yourself. Maybe I just need some money.
Pictures, please!
This post DEFINITELY needs pictures to go with it!
I really enjoy your writing. And now am deeply shamed of my futon.
I find sometimes that my fire for poetry and bottles on the mantle hasn't gone out, it has just been pushed to back of the line.
Our house is also in a constant state of flux, being dressed up only to be torn down by the bullies that are my boys and a gang of pets that chew, scratch and piss with the best of the critics.
Yet, we go forward. My hope is that someday I'll have pushed so far it will come full circle and I'll find myself content in the decor of my home and once again be able to burn with such fury over things I've left behind, like poetry at my fingertips and bottles on the mantle.
As a current college student sometimes I look around at my brown velour section couch and three-legged futon and I cringe. But then when I realize the purpose of my furniture now is to be danced/spilled on, I'm okay with it. Eventually I want nicer things but I'll take velour and dance parties for little while longer.
What a great nostalgic post. I don't believe that ALL the poetry you wrote was crap.....you have such a beautiful way with words.
Not so much a post about furniture.
Oh, to be young and full of passion! Vive la framed Klimt poster.
Gene the pumpkin man! This fall we went there and got pumpkins and he gave us a special squash and we tried to make stuff from the recipe book they hand out. I love that guy.
Also, my friend pulled an Eames chair out of the trash in Detroit over christmas. It lives in his ex-girlfriend's house now.
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