This thrift—also known as Saks North Avenue—is on everyone’s list, and for good reason. Prices at the DAV have remained sane even as other thrifts slap ridiculously inflated prices on their donated junk (a trend that is beginning to make thrifting feel akin to doing your grocery shopping at a 7-Eleven). Add to that the fact that DAV boasts a wide selection of goods—furniture, clothing, toys, books, records, housewares, plain old weird stuff—all collected into a large, well-lit warehouse, and you’ve basically achieved thrift nirvana.
True, there may be multiple hipsters simultaneously combing the racks (in fact, we considered calling this “Best Place to Pick Up Art Chicks”), but the DAV is huge enough that your thrifting style will remain unfettered, and the staff continuously rolls out new racks and bins of treasures to keep the groovy-crapola-to-plain-old-crap ratio satisfyingly high. Recent trips to this thrift have turned up some truly extraordinary lamps (we left the one shaped like the Liberty Bell—all yours for $2.95), an amazing black-leather Jackie O jacket (we love it when people ask us where we found it), and a mint-condition copy of the Wild Angels soundtrack (by none other than Mike Curb, former lieutenant governor of California, in his wilder days—95¢).
One more fine fact about the DAV is its generous hours of operation—Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m.–8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m.–9 p.m.; and 10 a.m.–4 p.m. the first Sunday of the month.
