The Vintage B-Side

Wandering through an antique store is like a treasure hunt.

With countless knickknacks to catch your eye, you’ll never know what you might stumble upon as you browse through the store’s dusty shelves. You could get lucky and find a rare vinyl album, or a shockingly affordable Tiffany lamp or beautiful old postcards with intimate messages. Maybe you’ll be creeped out by the unsettling porcelain dolls, or the portraits of strangers, the shadows of so many lives that have come and gone lurking behind each object. Or maybe you’ll find the DVD for a problematic movie or a not-quite politically correct hula girl figurine. On the shelves of an antique store, you may find the ghosts of forgotten lives and clues to untold stories, sitting silently, waiting for someone like you to come by. Antiques reveal the secrets of our past — gems and garbage alike. Some things are lost to time, and others, we’re desperate to forget.

In the Vintage B-side, I invite you to stroll through the Arts section’s antique store. Look beyond the dust and explore both the beauty and discomfort that coexist in the past.

Daily Arts Writer Isabelle Perraut can be reached at iperraut@umich.edu.

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An illustration of an old record on a vintage-style turntable.

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An illustration of a wooden antique radio with gold dials and fixtures

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An illustration of a green knitted cardigan. It is old and worn, and is similar to the cardigan worn in the past by Kurt Cobain

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