City Butterfly

From good picks to bad pick-ups
Reports of American Pickers picking through northeastern Pennsylvania were prolific last week.
Say that three times fast…
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, American Pickers airs on the History Channel on Mondays at 9 p.m. It features “pickers” who scour the country in search of hidden gems. They dig through basements and backyards, garages and barns to find forgotten treasures that give us a glimpse into our country’s history. They really are the ultimate antiquers.
Pickers Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz were spotted in The 570 last week, including parts of South Scranton and in Carbondale. Fans of their show can pick them out of a crowd any day.
Just ask Carbondale’s Jennifer Kraft, who was kind enough to give us an eye-witness account of her Pickers encounter. Kraft was driving home from work when she saw the Antique Archaeology van at a stop sign waiting to pull onto Rte. 6. The timing was just right, and their van pulled up behind her vehicle. “Mike was driving and Frank was riding shotgun (like they always are on the show), and I was such a geek. I kept trying to catch Mike’s eye in the side mirror, waving and smiling,” she said. “I knew exactly where they were going — Baumann’s.”
And she was right. Kraft and husband, Perry, are huge fans of the show and are always saying the Pickers should visit Baumann’s Antiques and Candles.
Seizing the opportunity to meet Mike and Frank, she pulled into the parking lot with about six cars full of producers and members of the crew behind her. Mike asked her if she was the owner, and she explained that Baumann’s wasn’t her place; she was a fan who saw them in traffic and pulled over in the hopes that they might meet.
“He and Frank were both really cool and laid back,” she said. “They said ‘hello,’ allowed me to sufficiently embarrass myself, gushing over them and the show, and then they were rushed away by producers.”
Looks like Kraft was in the right place at the right time to pin down a pair of Pickers!
In other social news, we’re bringing in our good friend and second cousin twice removed, the City Bitterfly, to help us pen the next part of our column. Read on…
You’ve heard the saying, “If looks could kill….” right?
Well, if they could, there would be fewer modern-day neanderthals dragging their knuckles through downtown hotspots these days.
Lest we sound too surly, we want to qualify our edgy opening with a notation that the anecdotes you are about to read are all true. They have not been embellished in any way, and in spite of it all, we had a steaming good time flitting through the bars in the Electric City on Friday night. We just couldn’t resist sharing some behavior that elicited more than a few dirty looks in the dark from our crew, not to mention lines that made us reference terribly small appendages on more than one occasion (giggle, giggle). As good goes, this wasn’t it.
So, here goes. Asinine pick-up lines that we actually heard on Friday night:
1. “How old are you?” Guys, come on. Didn’t your mama tell you never to ask a lady her age?
2. “You look like my mother.” That’s a direct quote from Dumb. His buddy, Dumber, took it to another level when he said, “You look like my grandma.” This trend of negging a woman in order to bring her down a notch so her self-esteem is low enough to go out with you is pathetic. Stop doing it.
3. “Hey, Doe Eyes, come here.” Really?
4. An oldy, and still not a goodie — inappropriate grabbing. To the dude who did this, you are really fortunate you didn’t pull back a bloody stump the other night. You’re welcome.
5. And we saved the best (or worst depending on your outlook on life) for last: nothing catches a lady’s eye like pointing at her and air humping. Yes, air humping. Need we say more? We wonder if this behavior was also extended to the women who wore shirts as dresses to the bar (skankerdoodle-dooooo!), or if it was strictly reserved to those of us who weren’t observing a pants-optional Friday.
Too bad we didn’t catch the names of these charm boys sporting “Bros Before Hoes” tees so we could have immortalized them in print; their mamas would be so proud.
— cb