Columnist Susan Snyder: Midnight’s the time to sale away

Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2004 | 8:11 a.m.

The chances of my hitting a garage sale are slim.

The chances of me staying up until midnight to hit one? Once in a blue moon.

Dang. Saturday brought both -- a second full moon in the month of July and a garage sale that started at midnight.

Did you know there are two 12 o'clocks in a day?

Dirk Vermin, owner of Pussykat Tattoo Parlor, opened up his adjoining Gallery Au Go-Go late Saturday to friends who hoped to "sell you all the crap they don't want anymore," which makes it pretty much like any other garage sale.

"We had one of these last year. But it was an art sale to pay my taxes," Vermin said. "This one is just for some friends to sell stuff."

What kind of stuff? Well, there was the usual glassware in varying sizes and sets. Old kitchen chairs. A sofa. Books, including "The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need."

There also were sets of black vinyl cat ears (yes, more than one) and a man hawking an enormous collection of compact discs. I'm not sure I'd heard of any of the bands, which makes me pretty sure that "hip" now describes my least favorable physical feature rather than my character.

"I'm trying to unload about 1,000 of them," said Ryan Kinder, an underground media mogul who publishes Smash Magazine and owns Big Lizard record label. "I just bought a new house. I've got another 3,000 (CDs) at home, if I can find a place to put them."

When you consider that most garage sale pros are staking out people's homes by 4 a.m. on weekend sale days, starting a sale a few hours earlier isn't really that much of a reach.

Some of the merchandise might be, however.

There was a Dodge Dart for $1,200. And amazingly enough, I arrived too late to snap up the life-sized male mannequin painted fluorescent orange.

"This guy's already sold," a young woman sitting beside day-glo David said.

For how much?

"Forty dollars."

Darn it. He had blue lips and everything.

I did manage to score an unopened play set featuring an interactive figure of Professor Frink from "The Simpsons" television show (if you have to ask what any of that means, you were sleeping at midnight Saturday). Bought it for a friend who would break out in a rash if anyone opened his Simpsons toys -- I mean, "action figures."

Checko Salgado had several sets that fit a Simpsons collector's guidelines, at $10 each -- two for $15.

"I used to do this at my house," he said of the midnight garage sale. "It was just me. It was partly a sale and partly a party. If people are drunk, they buy more. They're like, 'Hey, I need this.' "

OK, if your first thought here was, "I wonder how he slid that past the homeowners' association," you sleep through more than midnight garage sales.

And you certainly wouldn't have been likely to drop a few dollars on the items listed on "Jenn's Huge-Mass-Of-(naughty word) Price Sheet."

"Books, $2. Comic books, $1," it said. "Vampirella, $8. Beaver coat, $15."

Yeah, the coat was real. But I don't know when I'd ever wear it.

Maybe once in a blue moon.