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Brant, for one, is sick of seeing the same old paperbacks circulate among the department’s 65,000 titles, about 20,000 of which are out on the sales floor. David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars. Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. All those damn Oprah books.

Brant herself is a compulsive collector, a prime example of someone who still finds romance in cultural relics. ("Bookstore work pays really lousy, so you have to love it so much," she says.) She’s obsessed with eight-track tapes — so obsessed that VH-1 has interviewed her as a potential subject for a new show called, appropriately, Obsessed. She’s also amassed obscure aggregations of books by E. Phillips Oppenheim, a mystery writer who published between 1895 and 1940; pulp fiction about ’50 gangs and rumbles; and lesbian pulp fiction from the same era, in which "the woman always gets freaked out when a man comes on to her and uses an ice pick to kill him."

"One thing you really do love is that you get first dibs on everything," says Pitts, who previously bought cast-off cultural artifacts as part of his jobs at Newbury Street’s Mystery Train and Harvard Square’s Phase Four Records, both now out of business. "I bought so many speakers, a Bang & Olufson turntable for $30 — that’s like a $150 used machine. Everything you have an interest in, you have first dibs on. You never know what’s going to come in."

During the resale transaction, there’s a tendency to make small talk. Customers say things like, This is a great book, have you read this? Or they state the obvious: These are mysteries. This is a paperback. This is a hardcover. They try to explain why they’re here: No more room on the shelves! Spring cleaning!

"I find it’s a little bit easier to deal with people here, because it’s a set amount, what we pay," says Pitts. "Whereas people at the record store really, really wanted me to barter over price with them. You have to know how to say no. People would have a Beatles record, there were millions of Beatles records made, and they’d be like, ‘They’re Beatles records, they gotta be worth something, give me something for them!’"

"Sometimes people feel like we’re rejecting them," adds Pasechnick. "But it’s not you. It’s not even your books, necessarily. We just don’t need these now."

Sometimes when a grandmother dies, the phone rings at Oona’s. While Kathleen White is certainly sorry to hear about the loss, as the proprietor of and chief buyer for a vintage-clothing store, she’s mostly interested in the dearly departed’s measurements. "If someone calls and says to me, ‘My mother died’ or ‘I inherited my grandmother’s estate,’ I say, ‘Was she a normal size?’ And they say, ‘What do you mean?’" What White means is: was your granny saggy? If so, she won’t waste your time. "The dresses with the boobs touching the waists? I can’t sell those. Kids won’t buy those."

A grandmother herself, White stands behind the jewelry counter of her 32-year-old shop, a tidy little store at the end of a Mass Ave alley that sells well-preserved clothes from the ’70s and early ’80s. White opened Oona’s with a partner in 1972, renting the space for $450 a month. Back then, she stocked ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s clothes, like poodle skirts and beaded sweaters.

Recycled goods must be in the White-family bloodline — brother Michael owns Mojo Records down the street. White got into the hand-me-down trade because she adored old stuff. She’s still a pack rat. "I have 50 jackets. I have a collection of salt-and-pepper shakers. I have so much junk it’s painful." A small-framed fiftysomething in a floral black dress that falls below the knee, White hasn’t always worn such conservative attire. Back in the days of Studio 54, where she says she danced, she wore farmer jeans, silver platform shoes, and a bright red shirt. Even now, White has a subtle flair, also reflected in the accessories sold in her store: thick, plastic bracelets hang on her wrists, while a long necklace with an amber-colored bauble dangles from her collar.

Neatly packed with racks of zipper-spangled biker jackets, women’s skirts, and men’s polyester shirts, Oona’s is part curated yard sale, part costume trunk. Thick wigs cover bald mannequin heads; a wall unit of shelves displays boas, purses, and hats; a clump of belts dangles from a wire-rigged post like a handful of rubber snakes. Over the years, White says, she’s sold Hawaiian shirts to John Lennon and Yoko Ono and threads to Steven Tyler; looking around the store, you could certainly imagine the flamboyant frontman’s trademark mike-stand scarves coming from this place.

Back in the early days, people shopped at Oona’s for their wardrobes. Now, White’s patrons more likely cross the store’s threshold on the hunt for novelties. These days, a sizable percentage of Oona’s customers are broke college students piecing together party costumes. "The trend for parties now is ’80s," says White. "So they want to look bike-y, punk, that kind of thing." It’s a Monday morning in May, and so far today, White’s sold only two items: a woman’s suit jacket to a transvestite, and a $12 dress to a female student assembling a fallen-angel costume. "There’re a ton of pimp-and-whore parties," White whispers. "At BC, they call it ‘Angel and Devil,’ but it’s actually a pimp-and-whore party. Those guys will buy a fake-fur jacket and a big ring."

In the ever-expanding universe of homogenous retail chains, Oona’s has become a sightseeing attraction, noted in sundry Boston guidebooks. Even local folks come in to see the spectacle. "Older people come in here and they party in the clothes," laments White. "They take pictures of each other. They say, ‘Oh, we’re so glad you’re here.’" Like tourists, these particular visitors don’t respect the native culture. "They walk away and the store’s in shambles," says White. "They never buy anything. And the manpower to pick up after them is sometimes — you say to yourself, ‘What am I doing?’ One lady said to me, ‘You should charge admission.’ I thought about it."

White’s stuff is funkier, more individualistic, more expressive than what’s sold at high-end consignment shops. She doesn’t stock her store with designer labels like Versace, Gucci, or even Ann Taylor — secretarial uniforms and power suits aren’t her bag. She doesn’t even really want mainstream, average clothes like khakis or V-neck cotton shirts. "I need clothes to be out there a little bit," she says. "Just funk." And Oona’s merchandise tends to be cheaper — a used soft handkerchief goes for $1, while a woman’s shirt can be as low as $5. Also unlike most consignment shops, which put clothes on the sales floor for a fixed time period (Somerville’s Poor Little Rich Girl, for example, displays items for two months) and pay the seller a percentage of the profit only if the merchandise moves, White pays out right away. So if her handpicked merchandise doesn’t sell, she takes the loss.