Silicon Alley

There’s an unlikely place in Dallas where you can find all the computer soft-ware your Utile hard drive desires. If you’re shopping instead for electronic innards, you can poke through piles of bridge rectifies and double female splices And before leaving, you might waul to check out the crossbows and barbecue. To shop here, though, you’d best get up early and bring a coat.

Once a month, in several downtown parking lots, the First Saturday Sidewalk Sale kicks into gent. For the past three years, rain or shine, between 300 mid 500 computer and electronics \ endors have gathered from across North Texas for what organizers call the “biggestmonlhly out-door sale in the country.”

Setup begins on the Friday evening before the sale and runs into the wee morning hucrs of Satarday. Serious shop-pen arrive early, dressed in wool and down, and aie action starts well before daylight,

“You wouldn’t believe what these peo ple do.” says Mollie Lang, who perches over a schematic drawing of the parking lots, marking it with a grease pencil as vendors arrive late. “Tbey shop with flashlights ai night. Tbey re a special breed of people”

Lloyd Gosdin sells computer disks. He’s been coming to First Saturday since il Marled, and, like many other vendors, hawks his wares from the back of a long” bed pickup. He chews tobacco and makes? change from his wallet. Gosdin says the weather never stops him, “We’ve been here in the snow and ice. Teeth shaking and everything else.”

For the hardy shipper. First Saturday is a bigh-teeh haven open the first Saturday of every month from about midnight till about noon. 2632 Ross Ave., near Central Expressway, 720-9054.