Students Search for Perfect ‘Cool Crap’ at Tate Poster Sale
Alyssa Fallon is always in the market for a cat poster.
So when the University of Georgia senior walked through the Tate Student Center poster sale on her way to the bookstore, a small poster featuring a cat was enough to make her stop.
The poster may end up in the living room of Fallon’s new apartment, where she is still figuring out the aesthetic she describes as “chaotic,” “colorful” and a little gothic.
“It’s kind of like the start of the aesthetic,” Fallon said.
Students flipped through stacks of prints looking for additions to their dorm rooms and apartments. Some arrived with particular interests in mind. Others simply waited for something to catch their eye.
The goal was simple for Sho Furuta, a first-year mathematics major.
“I’m just looking for cool crap,” Furuta said.
Jeff Apostolou, a road manager for The College Poster Sale Company, has watched students’ preferences change over the years.
“Well, what’s interesting over the years is interest has shifted from the bigger posters to the smaller posters,” Apostolou said. “People are more into, kind of, the collage idea of getting a lot of little things who represent them.”
Instead of choosing one poster to dominate a wall, students can combine smaller prints to create a collection of their interests, from music and movies to video game characters and national parks prints. Poster sale shoppers have one thing in common, though: They want their room to represent their interests.
Furuta’s Oglethorpe House dorm walls are a blank slate.
“The way we have our dorm set up, we have, like, a living space with huge empty walls,” Furuta said. “So me and my roommate here were trying to get something to cover up the empty walls.”
The prices also made the sale appealing to Furuta, who compared them to posters he has seen in museum gift shops for more than $20.
Students not only find the sale affordable, but reliable. The College Poster Sale Company has been selling posters to UGA students at the start of each semester for more than 40 years.
Whether students are beginning with empty dorm walls or adding a piece to a developing collection, students have a growing preference for spaces built from multiple interests rather than one defining image.
For Fallon, that means another cat poster added to the mix. For Furuta, it might be Star Wars, art or whatever else catches his eye.
Emily Sternkopf, Kelly Macdonald, Maura Potvin, Mollie Beth Johnson and Sadie Hutchens are students in the Home and Garden course in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
