Thursday 20 September 2007

josies is my local

My local op shop that is. Situated here in Balaclava, around the corner at 255 Carlisle Street, I believe that Josies (tel. 9527 2929; M-F 9:00-4:00) is Melbourne's only Jewish op shop. Just last week they had a wooden musical box with a picture of Jerusalem's Wailing Wall on it. Not sure what the tune was though.

Josies is a small op shop - clothing, some toys, books, shoes, some homewares, some linen, some bric-a-brac, no furniture. I can't honestly say that their stock is great but I do mostly find something whenever I go in. (How often is that? hmmm, weekly.) Some good buys have been: a copy of Hanging Out with Cici by Francine Pascal* which I read as a child and am storing for baby bear; a fine knit cabled men's woollen jumper for Tim from Saba; a black wool Valentino skirt made in France and of excellent quality with a tiny waist that will be refashioned; and best of all, the boob trumpet, ah, that is, the breast pump. This device has been a life saver and cost me only $8 (they retail for around $90) - it does actually count as a best find ever. Kudos to my neighbour who spotted it in the window and alerted me.

So Josies is certainly worth a look - all that they are missing is an apostrophe.

* Yikes, I just learned that Francine Pascal was the author of all those Sweet Valley High books, which I didn't read. Cici will never be the same.

This entry is cross-posted at I op therefore I am, the op shopping blog for Melbourne - please visit!

3 comments:

Di said...

Wow- that is a score! You have such good op shops near you..
Re Sweet Valley High: my that brings back memories! A friend and I had so many of them we set up a rental library in my locker and used to rent them out to other students for 5c. I think we should have priced it much higher, we never made any money out of it.

Anonymous said...

ah, the case of the missing apostrophe. So often one finds an unnecessary apostrophe, if only they could trade places!
I remember when I first heard about then saw a breast pump - it freaked me out (I'm childless you see!).
Have fun in Sydney.

From the lion's mouth said...

Francine Pascal only *created* the Sweet Valley High books (click on the link, the wikipedia entry tells who some of the ghost writers were!)