Why San Leandro Has the Best Yard Sales Ever

In the early days of her career, the novelist Dorothy Bryant used to recuperate between books by cruising yard sales. It was a way of entering into other lives that cost little either in money or in intellectual sweat. 

I like yard sales, too, and San Leandro is the best town I know for them. It's got the perfect nexus of taste, atmosphere, quality of stuff and uninflated notions of what price the stuff might bring. The host homes range from impressively rehabbed Craftsmans to modest bungalows with the owner's dad's Willys Overland parked on the side. People live here a long time, and they accumulate a lot of stuff, which they care for well and leave to a nonplussed relative when they pass on. Maybe a dozen sales are held on any spring or summer Saturday. And every yard-sale holder has a story. Every couple of weeks, I head up Bancroft Avenue with $15 and a yen to hear those stories. So let's go yard saling!

But first, a fuel stop at the , where I pick up (in addition to the week's garden produce, which I don't count in my $15) a fine tamale with slaw for $2.50 and two lovely handmade soaps for $5 from Ares Brazeil and Jessica Ento of Delicious Skin. Jessica's mom, Jay, is the CEO of this family business, whose skincare scents range from "Neroli" to "Beer." Ooof, now I only have $7.50, but no matter. On to the yards!

On Broadmoor, Marian Silva is disbursing the stuff left by her 97-year-old brother-in-law and his daughter, who both passed away recently. Little Italian flags line the driveway en route to a few tables of promising rummage. 

"My kids left me here without any lunch," she says. "Was that nice?" 

I find lots of interesting things, including a great retro maxi-dress. Sadly, it's a wee bit small, and its hangermates are a wee bit large. Even though it's homemade, with the old-school five-eighths seam allowance they told us to make in Girl Scouts, I wouldn't be able to alter it to fit. I have a couple of rules: I don't buy things I know I will have no use for, just because they're cheap. I also generally don't bargain with people in San Leandro, but pay what they ask. Prices here are reasonable, and most people don't seem to want to profiteer off their family's possessions. Still, I've heard that dealers and other pros trawl the neighborhoods early on Saturdays, and stuff sells so fast that most people here don't need to continue their sales on Sundays.

At Marian's, I end up with something I really need: manila envelopes, so my grad-school instructors can mail me my savagely critiqued seminar papers—enough for 25 cents to probably take me through a Ph.D. Also, two bottles of Skin-So-Soft. The daughter-in-law "stocked up on Avon," Marion grumbles. "It must have been the influence of the Depression." I don't know about you, but I was sorry when Avon quit marketing Skin-So-Soft as a designer fragrance in favor of its true function as bug repellent. 

Today's highlight, found on Beverly, is a $5 bookcase whose central shelves are adjustable to fit my art books. The little girl of the family is busy hiding her Pooh prints from customers, as she does not want her parents to sell them. The house is beautiful, and the owners are people after my own heart: They collect rummage themselves, and turn it over every few years. "We used to be in that mode," the dad says as he kindly loads my new bookcase into my car. By which I assume he means trawling around in a crappy car for other people's discards. He is so nice about it, though, that I don't mind.

Still, my best yard-sale moment was a couple of weeks ago, when a lady on Bancroft Avenue sold me the BeautiFeel shoes right off her feet for $10. She had worn them just once—to the opera—but they were too large for her. I was stunned, partly because the shoes retail for $192 but also because what are the odds of meeting another size 11?

On my last stop, around 3 p.m, I meet a family that's getting ready to pack it in. "People got here really early," the mom says. All that's left when I arrive is the customary Free Pile out in front, from which I retrieve a pack of light bulbs. Maybe I can hang one over my head and get an idea for a seminar paper.