Lava lamps, collectible coins, baseball cards, bagpipes, VHS copies of every \u201cYoung Indiana Jones\u201d film ever made. If there\u2019s any truth to the proverb about \u201cone man\u2019s trash,\u201d then the Juneau Community Garage Sale was a treasure trove unlike any other in town.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t touch something for a year, why keep it in your house?\u201d said Steve Byers, one of 50 vendors who set up shop in Centennial Hall for the sale Saturday morning. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s worth it just to see someone smile when they get a good deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
For 21 years, the convention center has hosted the annual community garage sale at which vendors \u2014 their wares displayed on foldout tables \u2014 and hundreds of shoppers fill the center\u2019s main room for most of the morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cGarage selling is almost an organized sport in Juneau,\u201d said James Wycoff, the event\u2019s organizer. \u201cThere\u2019s so much great energy here.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot of that energy was attributable to Wycoff himself \u2014 a jovial man clad in a Hawaiian shirt, beaded necklace and a Greg Norman-styled golf hat with a cardboard sign reading \u201cBoss\u201d pined to it. His hat might as well have been a crown, though, because Wycoff is undeniably the garage sale king.<\/p>\n
If it weren\u2019t for Wycoff, Saturday\u2019s community garage sale wouldn\u2019t have happened at all.<\/p>\n
Six years ago, Centennial Hall staff planned to stop organizing the event. When Wycoff learned this, he approached convention center staff and asked what he could to keep the sale around.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked what it took, and they said they needed somebody to get her done, so I said \u2018I can do that,\u2019\u201d Wycoff explained, and that\u2019s what he did.<\/p>\n
For the past six years, Wycoff, who recently retired from a 40-year career as a pharmacist, has been working as a volunteer to organize the garage sale. At first, organizing the event was difficult, he said. Making sure that all 50 or so vendors arrived on time and abided by the rules \u2014 \u201cno fire arms, no whiskey, no live animals, no food\u201d \u2014 was no simple task.<\/p>\n
Now that he\u2019s got a few years under his belt, Wycoff said putting the event together has become easier. And he certainly seemed to run it with ease.<\/p>\n
From his booth, positioned right at the entrance to the sale, Wycoff sold jackets and fishing gear (nets and rods). Though he\u2019d sold nearly everything he brought by about noon, he seemed more motivated to make conversation than sales. He\u2019d frequently stop passersby simply to chat or exchange jokes, and when there was nobody near his booth, he\u2019d stroll around the room visiting other vendors.<\/p>\n
The way Wycoff sees it, the community garage sale is great for two reasons. The first, he said, is the event provides space for people who live in apartments or on boats to have garage sales, which they might not be able to do otherwise. Wycoff also likes that the event attracts nonprofits who use it to raise money for their causes.<\/p>\n
Relay for Life, for example, had a booth set up Saturday morning, as did another organization raising money for Alzheimer\u2019s research.<\/p>\n
Bill Lomax, a vendor who sold glass pipes and bongs, fits into Wycoff\u2019s other category \u2014 he lives on a boat in Auke Bay. Though he didn\u2019t sell as much as he\u2019d hoped Saturday, he said the event helped give his home-run business, Northern Lights Glass, some much needed exposure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis helps because I wish I could afford a retail space, but it\u2019s just not feasible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
With this year\u2019s sale now behind him, Wycoff said he plans to continue organizing the community garage sale for years to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy main job is to allow everybody to be as happy as possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or at sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lava lamps, collectible coins, baseball cards, bagpipes, VHS copies of every \u201cYoung Indiana Jones\u201d film ever made. If there\u2019s any truth to the proverb about \u201cone man\u2019s trash,\u201d then the Juneau Community Garage Sale was a treasure trove unlike any other in town. \u201cIf you don\u2019t touch something for a year, why keep it in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":19477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19476"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}