the televisions at the SALVATION ARMY THRIFT STORE

I just had the best experience, it was unreal.

I went to the Salvation Army to look at clothes, because my clothing is finally seeing it's last days and I'm tired of trying to constantly sew up holes that never seem to end.

I'd never been to this particular one before, it's a number of blocks straight down the street from my apartment in Bed-Stuy.

At the entrance, spray-painted above the door is a sloppy written graffiti-style sign that reads "STORE" with an arrow pointing up. You walk through that door and you enter into a warehouse-style set of stairs, grimy and beaten up. The railings up the stairwell are lined with that neon orange plastic that looks like chicken wire...?
This:
...but thinner than that, and more of a crossing weave. Anyway, you get the idea. The sides of the stairs are lined with that stuff. So, you walk up the stairs and go two times around before you get to an opened door where you can see that the light is on and there are various items, like vases and such, so you know you're in the right place. I went inside there and looked around and it was pretty much a normal thrift store from there on out.

Except that there were about 8-10 television sets against the wall, they were all turned on and there were about 4 different things playing on the tvs, so some had reptition of visuals. But none of them looked the same. One was playing As Good As It Gets, one was playing the end credits of something, two were playing the same television channel, and the others were playing alternate things I can't remember. The two that were playing the same channel has opposite color spectrums, like one was normal and the other was in negative and it kept rolling the image and flickering. The TV playing credits was playing a VHS tape, and the tape must have gotten stretched over time, with major tracking issues, so that the sound kept occilating between being elongated, short, and fuzzy. All the TV sets had the sound on, so that they were playing the most bizarre chorus I have ever heard. It sounded like the soundscape for a horror movie, the song playing for the credits sequence was indiscernable due to the amount of damage the tape had sustained, so it was playing this wonderfully strange humming, spread out sound.

I stood transfixed by the television sets for a while, it was eerie.

Then I bought the two t-shirts I had chosen, and before I left, the tape on the TV set playing credits ended and it went to snow, so along with the various other channels and films, there was a TV playing loud static. It was great.

And it was one of the few times I neglected to bring along my camcorder. Next time I go, I'll bring it along and see if anything so stupendous happens again...