Maxwell Street Days

This morning kicked off State Street’s Maxwell Street Days, an annual downtown Madison event named after the famous street sale in Chicago. Earlier in the day I took a stroll down State Street, and as always, it felt like Christmas in July with hundreds of sidewalk sales lining the streets, throngs of sweaty people, and salespeople with bull horns atop ladders, drawing in customers with proclamations of unbelievable deals and steals.

The event takes place today through Sunday, and as with any “bargain basement” type of sale, there is a whole lot of junk, but certainly some good deals as well. Today I found some nice orange North Face water shorts for $12 at Sports World, a few colorful plastic plates with intricate designs from Pop Deluxe for $4 each (perfect for concerts on the square!), and finally a delicious root beer float, the first of the summer, for $2 from the Chocolate Shoppe--perhaps the best deal of the day!

Probably the most interesting, and disturbing, observation of the day was that there was a line to get into Bop, this super trendy/pricey women's clothing store on State Street. It was like trying to get into a bar in college! A uniformed security guard allowed people to enter, only when the same number of people exited the shop. What is that? I certainly don't think that's in the spirit of Maxwell Street Days!