Flea market bonanza

Today, because we are in the MON (middle of nowhere), my roommate and I drove about 15 miles west to the neighboring city of Sterling and its twin city across the river, Rock Falls. Sterling used to be considered the "hardware capital of the world." Thus, we did manage to find a lot of abandoned factories. Economically, Sterling and Rock Falls (which is across the river) is poorer than Dixon and has about 10% below the poverty line, and is one of those cities that over the last few years has been hit pretty hard by the economic downturn. The main reason why we went was because they had an indoor flea market (shown here) there that I wanted to check out. I got a lot of amusing photos for your enjoyment in addition to some pictures of the somewhat shabby city. There were some true historical relics on the four floors of this building, which used to be an old bank. I couldn't believe some of the things people would actually try to sell.

What did I find? Dear reader, I am so glad you asked...


Nothing screams traditional girl toy like Barbie and the one I found had a hometown twist. I have a friend back in Chicago who has practically every Barbie known to women but I'm guessing she doesn't have this one. In retrospect, I should have probably gotten this for her but I prefer to keep these anatomically distorted figurines in their rightful place, on the shelf and sealed in a box in some musty basement. Speaking of dolls, I never actually saw Bride of Chucky because I was only in junior high when this came out and hadn't really begun watching Rated R movies yet. Still, I had heard enough from the older guys in my youth group about the original Chucky to be a little unsettled by the notion of freaky dolls.

I have fairly fond memories of eating Jello growing up. Even if it was just made out of water, pig fat, and sugar. One of my high school friends really liked Jello and he really liked apes. This other book is probably a must-have for college students because if there's anything worse than BS-ing assignments, it's doing a poor job of BS-ing.

The great thing about flea markets is that you're never quite sure what you'll find. I'm not sure why people sell empty beer cans at a flea market, and I can only speculate as to why someone would be trying tell old porn magazines.

I think it would be great to hang these two signs in a classroom. The second one offers sage advice.

Sterling has a historical mural society so we came across many buildings that had murals on them. Here's one of the presidents that had visited Sterling.

There's not much of skyline in Sterling or in Rock Falls. We did find lots of these, though. As you might assume, the downtown area that we were in was pretty much empty and aside from the pubs, all the stores here closed by 4pm. I used to complain that St. Louis was pretty dead on the weekends but what we saw today just blows that out of the water. Even the shots from the bridge that separates Rock Falls from Sterling were not so hot.





Hopefully, when the weather gets a bit better, we'll be able to go visit some of the state parks and take some more memorable pictures. When the main attraction of a town is its Super Walmart, you know there are some issues. Still, I know that part of the reason why it seems like I'm in the MON (besides the fact that I am) is because I don't know to many people here and when it comes down to it, it's really about who you're with as much as it is where you are.