Not for beginners: Goodwill ‘As Is’ gets put on notice

Text and photos by Caitlin Donohue

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Shop til you drop at your local prison... I mean- Goodwill!

“This is the best kept secret in San Francisco,” explains a gentleman who is shoving trash bags full of used clothes into his car. To his side, a bevy of homeless folk rummage through a newly dropped off pallet of purses, most of them spilling to the 11th St. sidewalk. They make it clear I am not to join them. Perhaps this place is a diamond in the rough, but there’s no way in hell I’m getting my Halloween costume here.

I’ll tell you what I don’t need; a hermetically sealed, corporately engineered, vastly overpriced sexy witch/hippie/dinosaur getup from Target. Not my bag. A good ‘stume is all about craft. I love the thrill of the hunt and on any day, for whatever reason, I love thrift stores.

But SF ain’t an easy town for used clothes- you find a lot of ‘vintage’ prices under the ‘thrift’ moniker. So I was all a-flutter to go to the Goodwill As Is store, located around the corner from their mega shop on South Van Ness. The As Is store is a “donation outlet,” a Goodwill warehouse supplying humanity’s offerings direct to you, without the unnecessary bother of employees “sorting,” “fixing,” or “cleaning” the items.

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Right this way for endless haggling and questionable business motivation!

Now, I am not what you’d call a “squeamish” person. I’ve trawled places where regular shoppers wear rubber gloves and unproven urban legends swirl about of dead cats found in the clothing trolleys. But this store struck me as something between the black market and a Greyhound bus station.

Inside the store, all is concrete. Sections are divided by chain link (?) fences, between which scurry the regulars, who include small Russian grandmothers, stray hipsters, and an oddly large family who folks told me buy the majority of the items here. The “coops” stand but a few inches shorter than I, and seem to necessitate crawling inside to view their contents. I paw the overflow of one of coop and to my delight, discover a Spidey suit with foam padded muscles. Mission accomplished! Let’s get the hell out of here!

In the next five seconds two things happen with a mutual synchronicity that makes them both easier to deal with: a store employee tells me to back away from the bin and I find a dirty pair of thong underwear directly underneath Spidey. I fall back to hating this store.

But perhaps I was merely fearing what I did not understand. For ‘As Is’ is a world unto itself, and hence ruled by strange beings with odd customs and arcane regulations. I was not allowed to shop in that particular bin, the (admittedly very friendly and helpful) employee explained to me. Here is how one partakes of ‘As Is’:

1. Put your name on the sign-up list for one of the “bin runs,” which occur 3-4 times daily. Show up early, line starts at 7:30. And for god’s sakes, put your game face on. The runs “are basically people just throwing things around,” says my helpful Goodwill associate.

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I kid you not, this guy had at least thirty names on his sign up sheet

2. Pay $5 for admission to the “auction.” Here, one may bid on five foot cubic “coops” of items, sorted by category Average winning bids on the coops are as follows:
$100 for a clothing coop
$400 for a sneaker coop
$300 for a “regular shoe” coop
$100 for a coop of single shoes
bidding starts at $40 for the electronics in the store

3. Wait for the fracas to subside and scavenge the leftovers. A bin-fresh item of adult clothing will run you $2.25, which won't begin to cover my therapy bills after shopping 'As Is.'

Interested? I’m not, but my friend out on the sidewalk assures me “you can make good money out here when you get good at it. People are selling jeans they find at $2 for $80! Plus, the recycling is good for the environment.”

But where does one resell a single shoe? Perhaps some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Goodwill As Is Store
Mon-Fri 7:30 a.m.- 3 p.m., Sat & Sun 8 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
86 11th St., SF
(415) 575-2197