Lots of clothes are just $1 at new downtown Berkeley thrift shop

Forty tons. That’s the amount of clothes the team at ThriftyCat sorted through to set up their new thrift shop on Martin Luther King Jr. Way in downtown Berkeley.

Forty tons is an amount that would have been daunting to most, but to shop owner, Bryce Kalousek-Maritano, it’s just another day at work. 

Kalousek-Maritano also owns Curiosity Shop, home of “100,000 things you don’t need,” just a few blocks down from ThriftyCat on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and is a consummate collector. He was helped in the clothes sorting by ThriftyCat co-managers Jada Graham and Olivia Ramos.

 “We’re getting a lot of people from the community who have come in and said, ‘Oh, I’m glad you’re finally open, we saw the pile of clothes, congratulations, you did it!’” said Ramos.

The clothes were sourced from a bulk supplier of second-hand clothes, and while all 40 tons are not currently on display, ThriftyCat, which opened on Jan. 18, is jam-packed full of clothing, and sorted into several whimsically titled style sections including Preppy, Earthy, Gothic, Rock, Sorority Row, Western, World Beat, Y2K, Street, Business and more. The store also has a wall full of denim and a large selection of children’s clothing, plus dollar bins on the sidewalk.

ThriftyCat aims to be “accessible and shoppable,” according to Ramos, something she says is rare in Berkeley, a town awash in “very curated” (i.e.: expensive) secondhand shops.

 “We’re just trying to give clothes to the community at good prices,” said Ramos, a UC Berkeley junior who is studying political science and gender and women’s studies. “We have the dollar bins and the $5 jackets outside and that’s our priority.”

Those priorities align perfectly with Curiosity Shop’s pricing, which also sells mostly “dollar things and five-dollar things,” according to Kalousek-Maritano.

The name ThriftyCat is meant to evoke a kind of nostalgia. Kalousek-Maritano kept coming back to the word “thrifty” when the team was brainstorming names, a word used in many store names from his youth. 

“And we all love cats,” said Ramos, who drew the store’s logo: a cartoon cat with dollar signs for eyes. 

The look and feel of the shop is important to the team, all of whom are artists. 

“We hope to have a lot more art outside in the parking lot,” said Ramos. “We want a lot of photo ops. We want it to look like an inviting space for people to come in.”

ThriftyCat, 2070 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley. Phone: 628-217-2862. Hours: daily 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Connect via Instagram.