The Savers Smile
Alex Rizkalla told me he had seen an old organ in the Sydney Road Savers, a Roland, an R-something, and that it had just been marked down. A Roland R-something could be almost anything – a string machine, an organ, or a synthesizer – so I had to go see.
We took a detour on the way to Gilpin park, where Luffy has regular social obligations. The Savers was real busy. This was a Monday afternoon, around four. There was a sale on. Kate waited outside with Luffy, tag-team style, while I went in to look for the Roland organ.
It had probably been sold. All I found was a sad little Italian GEM spinet with a $1199 price-tag, which is about 1199 times more than anyone would pay for it. But that was at the back of the shop, so I had to work my way past a lot of people there and back.
Most of the customers were dressed like normal people. But there were a lot of young hipsters as well, that end of Sydney Road being increasingly fashionable. And as I walked past them, the hipsters would give me this strange look. They’d smile at me, but like they were embarrassed.
Afterwards I realised what it was. The smile was their way of telling me they were shopping ironically. They weren’t there because they were forced by circumstance to buy secondhand clothing. They were there to find cool op shop kitsch. But they were, of course, concerned that strangers might confuse them for one of the more impoverished customers buying necessities. So they gave me that uncomfortable grin to re-affirm their social status, the Savers smile.
