Maxwell Street Days.

It's the third weekend in July and you know what that means: Maxwell Street Days on State Street. It's time for all the merchants to haul a lot of merchandise out on the street and sell it very cheap. There are numerous cluttered stalls:



There's plenty of stuff that seems to have been shipped in from retail limbo to be unloaded as a seeming bargain, like these hipster action figures, with 3 interchangeable heads--Hipster! Philosopher! Cynic!:



They're only 4 dollars. Is that a bargain or a rip-off? Maybe you could buy 25 of them for $100, stow them away for 10 years, then make a killing on eBay, when there's some kind of 90s nostalgia fad going on. (Or ... wait ... is that already going on?)

Part of the idea seems to be to present merchandise unappealingly. Just toss all the old junk in a cardboard box. Go ahead--buy those pink panties!



Or just have a nice Wisconsin brat, cooked outside.



Or buy a Popsicle from the Popsicle Girl:



And listen to the Cashbox Kings:



They're pretty good.