Channon Fulton – Community Connections Through Yard Sale Beads

Claudia Henock 0:04
Hi everyone, welcome to Your Most Precious Thing, the show that talks about the stories behind the items we hold near and dear to our hearts. I am your host, Claudia Henock, and let’s meet our guest for this week.

Claudia Henock 0:19
Writer, dreamer, baker, teacher, singer, professor, and most importantly, survivor. These words best describe Channon Fulton, a DC native who hosts yard sales at her home. As someone who has seen her hometown change from woods and creeks to modern style apartment buildings, Channon talks about why she wanted to start yard sales to bring the community together.

Claudia Henock 0:44
Hi, Channon, how’s it going? Welcome to the podcast!

Channon Fulton 0:47
Hi, Claudia. It’s feels good to be here.

Claudia Henock 0:51
I’m glad to hear that too. So let’s start with this episode with my most common question. What is your most precious thing?

Channon Fulton 0:59
My most precious thing is the 15 cent lucky bead jar at the community yard sale I host. It literally is a classic mason jar full of a variety of glass beads and buttons. And whenever someone makes a purchase from the yard sale, they can, for only $1. It’s $1 anyway, you can purchase a 15 cent bead. Just kind of like a nice little, it gives a retail vibe, you know those last register checkouts, right?

Channon Fulton 1:27
Yes, and it’s just so cute, and people enjoy it. And it is actually good luck. I’ve got some reports of good luck coming from that bead jar, Claudia, I have to let you know, I have to let you know.

Claudia Henock 1:39
That’s definitely really cool. So what led you start the community yard sale?

Channon Fulton 1:44
It was actually a variety of events, like a mix of two major events, I would say the strong of the two would be the post COVID type of sadness. I know like sadness, for lack of a better word, in the atmosphere around my community. It is definitely was a community already struggling in DC from gentrification before COVID. And then COVID just hit us, and it just kind of literally almost wiped out that spirit that I know is there in locals in DC. We are really like happy, spirited people. Sometimes things just kind of get a little too rocky here. And so I just wanted to boost the spirit of my community and our spirits.

Channon Fulton 2:24
And then simultaneously in my personal life, my dad had left me his house, for lack of a better word. He got married, you know, and retired, and moved out to Glen Burnie, Maryland, with my stepmom. And we remodeled and during remodeling and COVID, we accumulated so much junk in this house. There was old junk that got stirred up during remodeling. And then you know, that online shopping post COVID, we can just click buttons online to buy since there’s nothing else to do. I had a bunch of COVID hoarding items. And my niece came in over the summer, I’ll never forget, it was July, and she was so angry with me. She was like, “This place is a mess. It’s like full of stuff!” And I was like, I think she was mad honestly at me and my dad like we haven’t, I guess done all we could do to make the house easily livable. But we had a lot on on plate. But I digress. I promised my niece I would get rid of the stuff. And two and two together, I decided to do a yard sale. Fix my community, get rid of some stuff? Here’s the birth of the community yard sale.

Claudia Henock 3:31
Well, that’s one way to do some spring cleaning, and another way to get to know some more people in your community as well. So I take that as a good thing too.

Channon Fulton 3:38
Right. Now, I think she’s like, pretty proud of me. I think she was surprised. That actually took on a whole new life of its own, and I’m really surprised. I’m really happy. It makes me really happy.

Claudia Henock 3:49
That’s always really cool to hear. So in speaking of community, do you have regulars that often come to these yard sales?

Channon Fulton 3:57
We do. We do have some community yard sale love bugs! People who just…Miss Elsa! She has to be on the top of the list. Shout out to Miss Elsa. Elsa is a older Jamaican woman, who is one obsessed, I think she’s just obsessed with bothering me, but she swears she has like yard selling expertise that I need, she needs to bestow upon me, but she really just comes to bother me and haggle me for for the price, and the funny thing is with Miss Elsa, she’s haggling me for the price when everything is literally $1. A low price of $1, for the ease of the community, like, I made it $1 so anyone walking by can get anything they want. Miss Elsa literally be like, can I get this for 78 cents, 79 cents? It’s the crack right there. I’m gonna give you 82 cents, but at this point, I’d be like, Miss Elsa, you know I literally just won’t ever walk away stuff for free. “But Miss Elsa, it’s on a house, it’s own house, take whatever gets you there,” and then she does, “I’ll pay you,” and then asks if she can pay in an quarter?

Claudia Henock 4:56
She definitely sounds like a character.

Channon Fulton 4:58
She is and she always just wants to like take over my yard sale and sell stuff, and give me like curry. She’s like, “You need to buy my curry from me,” because she does like home cooking curry. Oh, and that reminds me I do owe Miss Elsa a call to buy a plate from her, so I’m going to be doing it on Tuesday. So I’m going to do a podcast about Miss Elsa’s curry.

Claudia Henock 5:19
Just like, it’s like a free advertising service like, “Hi, this podcast is sponsored by Miss Elsa’s curry!”

Channon Fulton 5:26
Seriously? Miss Elsa’s local curry! Yes, she’s literally an older Jamaican woman. Miss Elsa has to be like, I kid you not, like 73 years old. But she so sprightly, and she makes curry and Jamaican goods from her home. And she does crafts and she wants me to start selling her crafts at the community yard sale. I know, so I told her no for that. Honestly, because it’s just, I’m a rule follower and my rule is just it’s just my stuff, and I don’t know how people would respond to their stuff being sold for a dollar. It’s more like a charity. Yeah, there’s like no profit involved. But we’re having a holiday edition and I think I will throw in some specials of Miss Elsa’s food. She is an absolute regular, she has gone to like all 12.

Claudia Henock 6:07
Oh, that’s cool. And if you know if she has like some social media or anything like that, or any like website for her food, where people can get, see if they want to do an order if they’re in the DC area. I can also put in the show notes as well if you want to do it that way.

Channon Fulton 6:20
Thank you. She’s so sweet, she just totally has a cell phone number, but I will probably make Miss Elsa Instagram for free, like poor paratus, like this, so that can happen.

Claudia Henock 6:31
Hey, why not? To get back to the topic at hand, you said a lot of the stuff that is sold from the yard sale has either come from the renovations of the home you inherited from your dad, or just from online shopping experiences during quarantine time. What would you say is the most unique item that you sold?

Channon Fulton 6:48
The most unique item I’ve sold? That’s a good question. I think it’s pretty unique, because I’m kooky. I have a kooky eye for things anyway. But most unique…oh, lucky cat! No, I think lucky cat is still the most unique item. Lucky cat is an actual lucky golden enamel cat I got from the original Gallery Place Chinatown on the back of a warehouse wholesale lot. That is some classic DC, they don’t even have stores like that anymore at Gallery Place – Chinatown.

Claudia Henock 7:14
Yeah, like sometimes you just need lucky charm to make things happy go lucky at a yard sale. So that actually brings me to my next question. Cause you mentioned during the lucky cat story, have you noticed how there was like major changes going around in the Chinatown area? What type of changes have you noticed in essentially your hometown area as well? Because I know you lived in DC your entire life. So what are the changes that you’ve noticed on your end?

Channon Fulton 7:14
Though there have been changes to everything, in the past five years in DC, I feel like there was like some sort of, and I’m not the one who notices it to see, like it was there some sort of line that we did not know about because it seemed like they needed things to be changed quickly. Like instantly, like by this date, and then all of a sudden every neighborhood was tore up. But in my neighborhood literally there used to be trees. I live off a major road in Northeast and many original native species, and we know northeast has to be a pretty heavily wooded area actually. And there used to be just trees right across the street. I kid you not. Now this picture is historical. I’m sitting on my front porch with flip flops on, and I take a picture of my feet and there’s trees across the street and a creek. All of that’s gone, totally leveled out. I mean, there’s a modern apartment building where one plot of trees used to be, the other creek is, they totally draining out of the creek. There was a lot that was just a field, you know, we just enjoyed running down a field. They totally turned up, turned up the field and put random townhouses on it. And I think the building of Walmart was innocent, but it gave, like just updating the Plaza. But it gave Developers an idea that got wild and just ran with it, like we can develop the whole thing. “Who doesn’t like Walmart, who doesn’t like modern things?” And that’s it. They literally have the audacity to call the apartment The Modern, like okay?

Claudia Henock 7:42
Yeah, I actually have another question to ask about that to. The first time I came to visit you in your neighborhood, I actually walked through a bunch of the newer apartment buildings, and they all seem to be really empty. There was like a lot of empty apartment buildings, a lot of empty storefronts. Do you have like a theory of why that’s happening?

Channon Fulton 9:24
Oh, Claudia, love you so much, yes, I think you work this brain, because I have like so many like answers in it, and details about DC. Post-COVID, COVID gave DC a developmental crash that nobody saw coming. Originally, you know, flashback to 2018, you know, things are looking gravy. Donald Trump’s in the White House, stirring up controversy we like in 2018. This was before we knew he was completely stone crazy. It was just an entertainment level of political controversy. So everyone was coming here, this was like the place to be, you know, this is a hot spot, and then flash two years later. As they’re building these great plans, COVID comes, and then nobody’s traveling anywhere, and definitely, not into the city. So it just crashed, and we had that empty plot. That plot was empty for five years, because they built the first apartment building, and when they started building the second for two years, clearing the land, draining the creek. And then COVID came in and it was empty for two years, additional two years. So the plot across the street been there for five years wide open, or just messing around with it, no real development. The buildings that have been built have a lot of empty apartments.

Channon Fulton 10:34
One thing I like about the community yard sale is it brings together the locals who have been born and raised here and the new people, so it just creates this type of universal chill, like, “You know what, this sucks”, this is here, but we’re still human, and we can still relax and buy something cute, and have a good time. And so as I’m local and we understand, non locals, okay, let’s just be honest, it’s just gentrification is to appeal to a greater mainstream, white America, you know, to present this place as the new hotspot to be. If you’re mainstream white America, and things are like Black Lives Matter, let’s catch flame, I’m not fitting the move here, especially off the backs of a large global plague. I don’t want to test the limits of my vaccine and my skin tone that much? I’ll stay where I am. And so people did. People did do that, and now this isn’t the only area with extraordinarily, large new developments that is empty. There, we were facing facts. We’re at an age in American history, where we’re facing hard facts about ourselves, as a culture and as a society, that we have never had to immediately face in our lifetime. And in the past four years, especially because we live in the age of pop culture, and pop culture tells everyone, “Everything’s good, everything’s okay. You know, you can buy and sell your way to happiness.” But we are facing the absolute reality that we cannot. And that is a, that’s a reality, some people cannot take or some people won’t simply face. I don’t think the city is ready to face the fact that they cannot buy their way to success here. Sorry, like, I’m a little bit of a professor, sometimes I’ll be like, over analytical. Sorry, that is why I’ve balanced that over analytical brain with extremely basic, highly colorful yard sales.

Claudia Henock 12:24
It’s good to have these conversations because like, you’re someone who’s lived in DC their entire life. So you have a different point of view on this type of situation, versus myself who is essentially like an outsider to DC. And if I start to say things like, “Oh, I lived in DC, all my life, blah, blah, blah”, you have every single right to go like, “Hey, wait a minute, what the hell are you? What is she saying?” So it’s still really important to hear basically, conversations from like, both sides of things, especially natives to an area who have seen the DC itself either change for the better or change for the worse, depending on their perspective on it. So for me, it’s really important to have these conversations with people, especially in the case of gentrification, while it does bring new items to the community, it basically forces essentially a community that’s already been there out because of like higher prices.

Channon Fulton 13:16
DC is facing a wild dichotomy because I do accept all cities must develop over time, gonna happen. And we are, you know, technically the capital of America, you know, we must modernize and go where America goes, I get that. There’s just a level of the immediate intensity of it that people have never seen before. People come from all over, people come from Miami, Miami is a hotspot and they’re like crazy here. Like they’ll move you right out of your house. You’ll be sitting on your lawn having a barbecue, someone will walk up to you. “Are you selling? How much for this?” Like we’re having a barbecue, man, like, what is, we are clearly happy in our home, it’s like the spirit behind it has become ravenous. And it’s almost like a hand of the universe had the slap that ravenousness down, and so that slap down happened, and now a lot of the development is just empty or boarded, literally for the development. The dichotomy is, if I say this to a black or African American person, they will immediately understand what I’m going to say.

Claudia Henock 14:16
Yeah.

Channon Fulton 14:16
And they’ll get it, if I say this to a non African American or black person, or white person, they will not get it. So the dichotomy is, the African, I say this all the time, the African Americans, DC is two places.

Claudia Henock 14:28
Yeah.

Channon Fulton 14:29
And the African Americans and the black people, we live in a small town and the white people live in the city.

Claudia Henock 14:36
Gotcha. It’s like essentially two different worlds, I guess?

Channon Fulton 14:40
Yes, the African American and Black people, we live in a small town when DC was much smaller, the Pre-Trump era, Pre Pre-Obama, pre that political attention. 90s DC, we all used to go to the same high school, or we all know someone’s high school. “You go to Blue? Oh, that’s wild, I got a cousin go to Wilson. I go to Coolidge.” Ooh, yeah, we all know the high schools we’re going to, we all know someone’s cousin. There was a healthy, uptown-downtown resentment like, “Oh, you from Southside. I’m from Northwest-uptown. Whoo. Yeah.” It wasn’t really a feud, no one was really angry about it, it was a funny, cute thing to say. So for us, it’s the small familiar town, where everybody kind of knows everybody, that lifestyle is dead, or definitely dying in front of our faces. And then for newcomers, or non African Americans or whites, it’s this glamorous, nationwide National City, it’s up on the rise, collecting all these politicians, it’s this hotspot place to be, or for them, it’s so dangerous and like a wild zone, we have it, and they’ll leave it. The locals, if the city gets bad, we won’t leave it, if you love it. But others, if the city gets bad, they will leave it. Like they’ll leave the apartments empty, but we will never willingly leave our house. To us, this is our town. A small town.

Claudia Henock 15:48
And in speaking of the house you mentioned, you mentioned you inherited your house from your family. And do you plan to live in that house for the rest of your life?

Channon Fulton 15:59
That’s the thing, Claudia, like and believe it or not, I tried to think heavily because people will ask me that. And if I’m looking behaviorally, heart is with the town, my heart’s in the city. My heart’s here, my life’s here. This is what I know. And I love it, I would not host the community yard sale if I did not love this community and the love feel like there was something for being on this corner. Behaviorally, the answer looks like yes. I think yes scares me because I like to think I’m more global than that, right? I was in Boston, Miami, New York, LA. I like to think I’m more, you know, versatile than that. But no, I’m like, no, I would never just let this house, you know, go to strangers and, and my family have no ties here. And my mom died when I was young, as well as my, my brother. And this is, you know, this is our home. This is like the last place they set foot.

Claudia Henock 17:01
Your house is important to you, your neighborhood’s important to you. Even if you go everywhere in the world, you always want to have a place to call home. I know some people, like myself, I’m kind of more like a wanderer like, I don’t really feel at home anywhere. But hearing you speak about how DC is essentially your home, your place is essentially in DC.

Channon Fulton 17:23
Okay, but I do see myself moving in the future. I think I’ll just like renovate it out. Because I’m just more modern, that my spirit is this, like, moving modern spirit. And like before I got to this house, it wasn’t a modern house. And I just see my spirit like going through this house, just to improve it and just to like boost the community. And then when the time is right, moving on, and leaving it to another family member, you know, not like dying, but like, I have a brother renovating it, keeping it in our name. Yeah. Because it is, it has become like a little stressful.

Claudia Henock 17:58
You’re actually making like a really cool point about how you want to keep the house and your family. Like, while you don’t see yourself personally living in this house the entire time, you do want to leave it within your family, which I think is like another really cool point too. Because, sometimes a house is your most precious thing, essentially. It’s in within your family. It’s the ultimate inheritance and it’s something you can pass down from generation to generation. So the house that you’re in right now, it’s something that’s super important to you and your family.

Channon Fulton 18:27
It’s our home.

Claudia Henock 18:28
Yeah, that’s always really important.

Channon Fulton 18:31
Gentrification makes everything so intense. And ironically, the point of the yard sale is to loosen that whole groove. I literally put so much investment in the type of snacks for the community yard sale. Every weekend features a different snack based on the weather, so oatmeal cream pies, if it’s October or fall, something hearty, something oaty, or peaches in the summer, fresh tomatoes, apples. We always do the classic chips and drink, and I do provide Kool-Aid. I don’t even try to fake, like, this is a yard sale, there’s like little juice bottle Kool-Aid, and I freeze the Kool-Aids. Locals from DC know about that frozen Kool-Aid juice box. Okay, it’s a whole vibe. And I brought even the newcomers into freezing a Kool-Aid couch, drinking it. Those are always 50 cents. I even got some of the local new, you know, no offense, like white people like, “What is this great thing?” I’m like “It’s frozen Kool-Aid, y’all.”

Claudia Henock 19:27
Oh, God. Well, sometimes you kind of live for reactions like that, because based on from what you’ve told me, the yard sale is a good way to bring essentially people who have been in the community for a very long time and the newcomers together, just to meet people, and just like to get to know the community a lot better.

Channon Fulton 19:43
Yes, and the wild thing is, thank you Claudia, the wild thing is, I originally thought of the community yard sale for my community, African American, black community, but ended up attracting a wild, wild universal range of individuals, wild in the best way. I mean, everyone comes you know, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Latin Americans, old people, young people, babies, people with dogs, people with no dogs, senior citizens, the elderly, black, white, I love it. It’s such a broader production than I ever imagined.

Channon Fulton 20:15
We have teddy bears for dollar, shoes, clothing, bases, kitchenware, DVDs, magazines, candles, you name it, we got it for $1. That’s the goal just to make everyone happy with seasonal snacks and treats. There’s a holiday edition, sorry, cheap plug Holiday Edition of the community yard sale. The snack will be hot cider. We’re having hot apple cider. We’re thinking about some pumpkin spice or cinnamon spice doughnuts. And then there’ll be a third slice of Christmas cookies. It’s going to be, don’t quote me, a week in November before Thanksgiving just to reel in the holiday season. This one, people, members of the community have offered to donate because I actually ran out of items. So they’re donating just to have their community items for $1 just to keep it going for the holiday edition. So, it’s very sweet, people are leaving donations on my porch as we speak. So we can, you know, have supplies and have items to sell.

Claudia Henock 21:10
That’s definitely really cool, and it’s really cool that you have people in the community helping you as well with like sourcing items to sell, and also promoting it as well, too. And speaking of promotion, I know in a previous conversation, you said there wasn’t a particular social media account for the yard sale itself, but do you have any social media that people can follow you on as well?

Channon Fulton 21:32
You can follow me at @chan_chan_alexandria, C-H-A-N_C-H-A_N and Alexandria. Actually, I’m an extremely humble, like Instagram, it’s like less than 400 people, but the people do find me really like me and stay forever. They say it’s very charming. So if you want to see some yard selling, some homemade items, I’m a girl. I’m a woman, I guess. And I’m a woman now. I have to remember that I am over thirty, I’m your woman. I’m a young lady, by definition.

Claudia Henock 22:03
We’re both young ladies at this point. Sometimes we don’t know everything. And it’s always good to learn about like to people around you, essentially, and keep learning about new things.

Channon Fulton 22:11
Claudia, you’re amazing. Thank you so much for letting me talk about this. Oh, and also, on certain Sundays, people can sit on the yard, they chill with a dog, and I have an obscenely large yard anyway for the size of my house. It makes no sense. But we use it to the best of our ability. Really small house, insanely large yard.

Claudia Henock 22:30
Hey, why not? If you have people just like relaxing, eating some snacks, watching the kids play. It’s definitely the place to be.

Channon Fulton 22:38
And it throws off that vibe. It offsets the energy of the abandoned, like property, and the abandoned development. It just really mellows it out. We’ve had over 172 newcommers to the yard sale, I stopped counting somewhere around the fourth weekend, I was like, huh, so I guess the average number will be about 115 people per weekend.

Claudia Henock 23:03
That’s actually really cool to hear too. So I’m really happy that a lot of people have been visiting the yard sales as well. And I’m really happy that you’re doing one of them for the holiday season as well too.

Channon Fulton 23:14
Thank you Claudia, it’s gonna be a big one. You’re amazing. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to like speak on these things. It’s just really started off so humble. I think a lot of the traffic comes from the metro, since I live in a major metro area, and people from the metro just thrilled by that. I think we’ve been blessed because people are like, “Oh, don’t you get psychos or stalkerss?” No. Like, the way that the signage is set up. I mean, I had like one or two dicey people, but no harm. It literally looks so friendly that it, I think the vibe just relaxes people. So even if someone has some crazy in their eyes, by the time they get up the steps, I got a lot of steps to the yard, they were laughing with cheap snacks, little juice. There’s always some knickknack that they like, brings back a sweet memory for them, and they just go on their way.

Claudia Henock 23:59
Channon, I want to say thank you again for being a guest on my show today. For people who want to know more about your yard sale, I will go ahead and post your social media information as well. And depending on when the episode comes out, if you have an official date for the yard sale, I will actually post that as well in the show notes as well, too. And Channon, I want to say thank you again for being on the show.

Channon Fulton 24:20
Of course, Claudia, thank you so much for inviting me! Are you kidding me? This is the best way to spend some time. Again, I’m extremely impressed by electronics for some reason.

Claudia Henock 24:34
You’re totally fine. Alrighty, get some rest and have a good night. Okay?

Channon Fulton 24:39
You too, goodnight lady!

Claudia Henock 24:41
All right, see ya Channon. Bye!

Claudia Henock 24:44
Thank you for listening to this episode of Your Most Precious Thing. You can follow me at @claudiahenock on Instagram and Twitter, as well as Claudia Henock on LinkedIn. You can also follow Your Most Precious Thing through my official website, www.claudiahenock.com, in addition to anywhere where you listen to your podcasts. Intro and Outro Music is Synapse by Shane Ivers, and you can find his music on www.silvermansound.com.