About Us

At Treasure City, we believe that thrift stores by definition should be thrifty. So we are. By selling items in our store at lower prices than other local retail and thrift shops, we are affordable to all, opening our doors to a truly diverse set of folks. And unlike other thrift stores, we work towards zero-waste: we throw away only a few trash cans full each week, not a big dumpster-full, we partner with Ecology Action to recycle whatever we can, and we give away unsold items each month at the Really Really Free Market. You can read the TC mission statement here. We are a constantly evolving hybrid of many things:

• Affordable Thrift Store
• Junk & Curio Bazaar
• Community & Events space
• Infoshop
• Non-Profit Business
• Reuse & Waste Reduction Center
• Really Really Free Market
• 25c Sidewalk Sale
• An experiment in alternative economics.
• A Mural space: the Mt. Blackmore mural on the side of our building was painted by local teens.

For several years, we also provided outside space for one of the Yellow Bike Project's Community Bike Shops. Yellowbike recently moved into a brand new shop of their own!

The store is volunteer-run and collectively organized. There are no bosses here! We are supported by donations of time (we love meeting new people) and goods (we always need more furniture, books and men's clothing) from the Austin community. We can sometimes pickup large or unwieldy donations on request or after yard/estate sales and house clearances. From the items you donate, we try to reuse and resell as much as possible, and to further divert waste from the landfill, we have a comprehensive recycling program developed with Ecology Action. We hope this project will be an inspiration and model for other groups to replicate. We welcome your questions and comments.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Our history

You can read a about the ongoing history of Treasure City here soon, which will include a basic time-line of events, how we started the project and the mistakes we made, in case you are interested in creating something similar.

Press quotes and articles about TC

Online reviews

Collective Inspiration

These are links to groups, movements, books and events that have shaped who we are and, consequently, what Treasure City Thrift is (as well as other grassroots, collective projects in Austin, TX).

Affinity Group Organizing
AK Press
Anarchist Soccer
Anti-Globalization Movement
Austin Spokes Council
Battle of Seattle (1999 WTO Protests)
Black Panther's Free Breakfast for Children Program
Black Panther Party
Brown Berets
The Cooperative Movement
Common Ground Relief
Cream City Collective
Consensus decision-making
Crimethinc
Deacons for Defense
East Bay Depot
Educators for Change
Firebrand Community Center (TN)
Free Stores/Shops
Globalize Liberation, the book
Haymarket Affair & Mayday
Horizontalism, the book
WW2 Italian Partisan Movement
KPWR Community Radio, Austin
Liberty Hall (OR)
Mondragon Cooperative Movement, Spain
Monkeywrench Books, Austin
Network of Bay Area Worker Coops
NYMAA (New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists) Organizational Structure
Olympia Free School (WA)
Invitation Document for the Portland Alliance of Worker Collectives
Radical Encuentro Camp, Texas
Really Really Free Market
Really Really Free Market on wikipedia
Rhizome Collective, Austin
San Francisco Diggers
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) / The Weather Underground
Spanish Anarchists
Spanish Civil War
Spanish Maquis
US Federation of Worker Owned Coops
Women's Action to Gain Economic Security
We Build the Road as We Travel, the book
Wikia: a wiki set up to change politics
Worker Coperatives
Yellow Bike Project, Austin
Young Lords
Zapatistas & Zapatismo
Zapatistas' Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle