Cargo — Local services in Portland

If I were just rating them on selection of interesting items they would get 5 stars for sure. The issue lies in their pricing. Here are a few examples from the Japanese stuff as I have an idea what they should cost.

The have a selection of used Japanese language manga that they sell for 12 dollars each flat. Some of these are super popular and hence common manga like Naruto. I’ve seen single volumes of manga go for less than 3 dollars in Japan. Most of that section wasn’t rare or interesting stuff either more like they don’t want to bother pricing so all 12 dollars it is.

Another example is kokeshi. I think the cheapest ones I saw there were 30-40 dollars all the way up to 220 was the highest I saw. Kokeshi are super common items in japan even outside the mass produced ones and unless they are by sought after makers they don’t really go for all that much.

Last example they had a bunch used of kimonos, the ones I looked at were priced at 90+ dollars. Again used kimonos are pretty common and I’ve seen them for way more reasonable prices in the US alone.

Overall it’s a very cool collection of stuff but everything that I had a general idea of the value was overpriced by quite a bit. One exception might be the records, they had some pretty cheap records though nothing of...

Love cargo! Spent a lot of time and money here especially in preparation for my wedding in 2016.

I do have to note an extremely off putting experience today.

Today (2/10/19 around 4:19pm) my partner and I decided to pop in the shop because it’s a pretty happy place for me and we were celebrating our anniversary. As my partner and I walked around we noticed that we were being followed by an employee. They didn’t ask us if we needed assistance instead just followed closely. At one point I turned around to speak to my partner and the employee that was a dark haired woman with a bob haircut in glasses was standing right behind him. I instantly felt very unwelcomed and calmly left the store. Honestly, I’m a little shaken by this because it felt like some low key profiling. Why didn’t this employee acknowledge us and instead actively stalked us? Did we not look wealthy enough? Were we too brown? For a shop that profits off of cultural appropriation (including our family culture) I certainly hope neither of these possibilities is the case.

Today marks the most awkward store...

I walked in there today to return a gift that a friend of mine did not like, that I had purchased for her here and I felt very shunned and judged for doing so. Only one lady was pleasant with me (she was an absolute joy, one of the start up owners…not the one with thick black glasses…she’s not so friendly anymore…more of any eye roller) The rest of you were very unpleasant and seemed very annoyed with my presence and my reason for being there, along with my questions. I thought we grew more mature with age…🤷‍♀️. It was interesting watching your passive aggressiveness towards me along with the whispers. I’ve been shopping at your place for 7+ years and watched all of your recent transitions. Also, stop with the BIPOC stamped boxes…as a POC it feels offensive and it def. offended the receiver of the gift. Seeing a geisha stamped on a box is rather gross. Have you stopped to think about what this is actually representing? Pretty naive for a “ “ women owned”+”incorporated” business. No response...