A sign on a tree by the front gate says Janice Taylor’s yard sale occurs “12 to dark. Sunday and ALL WEEK.” If you’ve just moved to Wrigleyville, Taylor will try to interest you in buying something, though it may not be exactly what you’re looking for. Today she has a variety of items on display in front of her white frame house on the corner of Cornelia and Sheffield. There’s a green-and-white owl-shaped ceramic lamp stand, a finished wooden box that she says “could be a stereo cabinet, a coffee table, or a computer table,” a fan, dozens of books, copies of Muscle & Fitness magazine, a tennis racket, a dartboard, a terrarium, various pieces of wicker furniture, some rugs and doormats, a plastic shark with a female torso in its mouth, a mini billiards table, a set of encyclopedias from the 1960s, a Lollapalooza T-shirt, ski boots, and a vacuum cleaner. There are also hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other objects covered by blue tarpaulin. Taylor, who’s 77, simply hasn’t had time to put them on display.
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Since 1990, Taylor’s used the front yard, back shed, garage, and basement as repositories for her sale items. During baseball season she allows discriminating customers to park their cars in her driveway. Until recently she rented out the second floor, and says she plans on eventually moving in herself. She uses the first floor for storing antiques, furs, and clothes left over from the 1960s, when she owned a resale shop on Newport, the precursor to such neighborhood vintage outlets as Strange Cargo and Flashy Trash. For Taylor, the house is merely an extension of the business she’s been in for as long as she can remember.
A fashionably dressed young woman stops by.
“Huh?”
A man in a Cubs hat stops by the yard. Taylor’s wearing her own baseball cap over her stringy blond hair. It reads “Torrey Pines.”
“You know, about like this,” Taylor says, making round motions with her arms.
“When?”
