No Sweat Shopping

-- gifts over $50, published Dec. 4, 2002

Gift Guide No. 2 -- winter fashions, published Dec. 11, 2002

contents Stocking Stuffers
Toys
Books and Music
Graphic Novels
Kitchen
Home Furnishings
Gadgets
Outdoors
Accessories
Pets
Sex
Spirits
No Sweat Shopping

Every year, last-minute holiday shopping begets a frenzy of desperate, heedless spending. How can it not? The mall is rife with items made by underpaid, overworked labor in the world's poorest nations. Absent international garment-industry standards, it's virtually impossible to determine whether some poor child in Tajikistan assembled your big-box-store purchases. At this point, Santa, with his menacing laugh, starts to look like the Man. His elves are working 24-7, and that North Pole workshop? More like a sweatshop! Even if there's only a few shopping days left, don't sweat it. Try these quick-fix gifts instead.

Merry Thriftmas!
Your anarchopunk friends are right: Shopping generates oppression. While they may advocate "liberating" holiday gifts, a legal way to break the cycle for sweatshop products is to refuse to create demand for them. Thrift-shopping is an obvious answer. Even in peak shopping season, thrift stores are less crowded than the mall, and since most are nonprofit, your low-budget spending spree also benefits local charities.

Better off Dead?
Don't waste time trying to determine the true origin of name-brand athletic shoes. Friends and family are better off rocking the dead stock. Made in the 1970s and 1980s, before globalism depressed worldwide labor prices, dead stock--a leftover cache of never-worn merchandise--is less likely to be tainted by the unfair labor practices common in today's shoe industry. Besides, it just makes sense. Before we go about making more shoes, shouldn't we first wear the ones we've got? Buying dead stock from mass-market retailers seems to, uh, defeat the purpose, so if local vintage shops and Ebay fail to produce the perfect pair, investigate deadshoescrolls.com. With Griffin-and-Sabine-like intrigue, this site tells the tale of how one hipster struck footwear gold by discovering a mother lode of ancient Adidas. Happy cool-hunting!

Be Your Own Status Brand
When only spankin' new will do, check Customatix.com, an online design shop where you can whip up truly unique kicks and have them made for you by a fair-trade workers' cooperative. The DIY aspect is cool, but a little obsessive-compulsive, so think about sending a gift certificate, and let your techie friends create their own sneak of dreams.

Think Globally, Gift Locally
You could present a loved one with a six-pack of Oly stubbies, but BuyOlympia.com offers similarly intoxicating gifts--T-shirts, music and accessories--from Portland's sister indie city that are hangover- and guilt-free.

Finally, if you can't beat 'em...
...log on to Popsweatshop.com. "We are working furiously, in sweatshop conditions, to bring you new and exciting musical explorations direct from our workforce of starving artists," claims this tongue-in-cheeky Northwest music website. At long last, a gift of tunes without the corporate static! No plaintive wail of underpaid (or overhyped) artists ringing in your ears.

WWeek 2015