Yesterday I went to a little pink store on Fownes street called MayFly. Essentially a walk-in etsy shop the store is filled with things like handmade steampunk jewelry, hand sewn dolls, hand drawn greeting cards, vintage clothing, pinup posters, and many other wondrous knickknacks and thingamabobs that a girl like me just eats up. I went there two years ago and bought my sister a bottle cap brooch with a picture of Fred Astaire in the middle. Divine.
I figured I would try to get some souvenirs for people and I much prefer the idea of supporting local Irish artists and buying something interesting over paying for a made-in-china, piece-of-shit, guinness-bottle-keychain that no one -and I mean no one– is ever actually happy to receive.
Along the way I wandered into a shop called Tola Vintage that is filled entirely with secondhand clothing from the 90’s. Floor length, daisy print dresses that your teacher used to wear; oversized denim pants that simultaneously make your ass look flat and your hips enormous; obscenely printed bomber jackets that look like something straight out of Nickelodeon… on meth.
Somehow it all worked. I walked through only intending to check out the space (essentially a basement with color blocked walls and a floor brimming with unsorted heaps of nylon and denim), when amongst the rubble I spotted a pair of striped, high-waisted shorts. I went to try them on without even checking the size (and therefore only half expecting them to fit) when -to my surprise- they fit! Like a glove.
A glove on a very fat hand…
“You’ll lose weight,” I thought, “You can wear them in the summer!”
Then I came to my senses, set them down like a good girl and was about to leave the store when I ran into the owner and one of his salesgirl/clothing models. Apparently Tola Vintage is the number 2 boutique on Asos Marketplace and they were taking a break from a photo shoot for their latest shipment.
Among my many gifts I have the uncanny ability to spot a Nigerian.
“How did you guess that?”
“Eh, it’s a thing,”
He was very nice and we ended up talking for a long while. Though I don’t remember what we talked about I recall thinking, “Wow it is so easy to converse with strangers when… well, when you’re not in the states.”
I ended up buying the shorts.
