This past Saturday my good friend Tim was planning on getting his first tattoo at Moo Tatto on South St. So lead by his adventurous spirt, we got on the subway around 5:30 pm and instead of getting off at the normal spot, Lombard and South, we got off the stop after and ventured toward South St. in order to explore. On our way there we passed an Asian shopping center of sorts. There were some wacky little shops and then a big food market connected to them. In one of the weird shops, there were rows of all different statues of Buddha in all different colors, shapes and sizes. The really large ones were wrapped in plastic and looked, although happy, trying to break through the film. At one end of the store, there were little kits and sets of home items, like a shaving kit for example, but everything was made out of paper. Kids' toys? One of the most prominent paper items was a house, like a doll house. There was a front yard, a garage, a dog, and door man, everything. It was made entirely out of thin cardboard. In the super market, past the awful smelling fish shop, the last isle, there were boxes and boxes stacked and lined up of all different kind of drink and liquids, ranging from yogurt drinks to squid juice.
After we left the market, as we got closer to our final destination, we stumbled upon a used bookstore. Attracted by the books and photos outside, we went in and looked around a bit more. As we sifted through old photos of strangers, we notice a sign that said "thousands more in the back". As we went to the back of the store, there was a door. We pushed open the door to find a huge back room, twice the size of the one we had just been in. It was filled with everything from old Life magazines and records, to miscellaneous household items. I recognized it immediately. I had taken a Saturday course at UArts about 3 years ago called "Collage and the Print". In that class we took a local field trip to a thrift store and a random used book store. Unfortunately, I didn't take notice to the street it was on during the class and have been trying to find it ever since. Consider it found. By the time we left this store, our other friends were calling to meet up with us to get Tim ink'd, so we figured we were almost there, crossed through and parking lot, and ended up exactly across the street from the tatto parlor. Perfection.
