Safe Combinations Celebrates One Year!

Thrift store manager Kai Cardinal outside the entrance to Safe Combinations

Interview by Cam Howard

Safe Combinations, Maine Trans Net’s pay-what-you-can thrift store, recently celebrated its first anniversary! The shop, located in the Equality Community Center in Portland, Maine, has been providing affordable, fashionable, and non-gendered clothes under the leadership of Store Manager, Kai Cardinal. 

I’ve volunteered at Safe Combinations a handful of times, and can’t speak highly enough about the space that Kai has created. The other volunteers have become beloved community members to me. A typical Sunday at Safe Combinations looks a little like this: Kai arrives first, probably with a volunteer or two in tow from Lewiston. Volunteers from Southern Maine roll in, mask up, and decide where we’re going to order food from. Then we lug a few totes or bags of clothes into the ECC conference room, and start sorting. We make chit chat and listen to music while we fold and sort, pulling our favorite items out of the pile to try on ourselves. 

To celebrate the anniversary of the shop, I asked Kai a few questions. 

MC: What's the earliest memory you have of the idea that became the thrift store?

KC: I remember this being talked about when my spouse was MTN president, and it has been bounced around as a “what if” dream for almost as long as MTN has been around. And then I remember (before the pandemic), Oliver was working here and he started spearheading popup thrift at pride events throughout the state. And it was just this rag-tag, tubs of clothes, and people would bring clothes into the old office - it was almost like a clothing swap at Pride Events. And I would help out at Portland Pride. 

“We had no idea what it was going to look like, and the first six months we were changing everything. We’ve reorganized our storage system about 20 times. We’ve reorganized the store layout a bunch of times. And I think what we used to hang up vs what we hang up now is a great example of that - I thought necessities would be really important, but people really get excited about fashionable, interesting things. More expressive items, instead of just a shirt and some jeans.” 

MC: How did it feel on the first day you opened the shop? What were you thinking or hoping? 

KC: Is “overwhelmed” an acceptable option? (haha) The first two days I was here I was moving the MTN offices, so it had nothing to do with the thrift store. We had already collected a ton of clothing, I had a complete blank slate and a budget, and that was about it. It was a lot. We opened in about a month after I started. I thought it took two months, so every day felt like two days getting started. 

There were three weeks where the whole room was taped off, because Winona and I figured out spacing to make sure it was accessible and usable. So we had duct tape lines on the floor, cordoning everything off, and Winona was going along making sure they weren’t bumping things as they went through. And I would sit in the middle of all of it while I ordered, in a very mid-2000’s bad drama movie. I would sit in the middle of it and hit send on ordering racks and hangers. 

At the start it was hard for me to be excited, and of course I was really excited to be a part of creating something that was really special. But there was this reality of, we have maybe six months to make this work and figure out what that looks like. And will anyone want this? Is this something we’re assuming that people want, and it’s too small of a community that it won’t support itself? Is this too niche? 

And while we were getting this set up, the community center was getting set up. And all at the same time this day light space, this community space with no barriers to be here. Watching that and getting to be a part of that was really powerful. There were many nights that I stayed way late just to bask in this space and what it was becoming. 

But I’m also opening this thing that is pay-what-you-can, that needs to support itself. I know my overhead and my bills - can I do this and not fall flat and fail my community. So I would just sit in the space and think, “it’ll be a really cool firework at least.” 

MC: What's something that this space gives the community that nowhere else in Portland does? What's something that it does that surprised you? 

KC: Taking away the barriers for people to explore and feel themselves, and feel good in themselves, in a way that’s so different. 

That’s not gonna happen at a Goodwill. There are many of us who can feel comfortable in more cis spaces, but so many of us don’t have that yet. To make that space, to normalize those joys that people can see and experience another’s joy, and share in these moments together and blossom. We get it with our binder fittings, people come in anxious and sheeping and tight in their body, and then we do a fitting process and get people their binder, and that’s a full transition that we can do here that doesn’t happen anywhere else. 

I didn’t expect so many people to want to come and just hang out for an hour! Not just volunteers, but like, people will try clothes on and just chat, watching people gas each other up is so great. 

MC: What's an idea that you're really proud of about how the shop "works?" 

KC: The suggested donation format - it’s super wonky, it wasn’t originally how it was going to be. But we had limitations that we could get around if we did things this way. And, not from a lack of faith, but I don’t think anyone thought it was going to work. People thought it was magical and wonderful, but was it going to sustain itself? But I believe in our community to truly pay what they can. Getting to try something so truly anti capitalist was really exciting for me and also really nerve wracking. The patreon hasn’t built as much as we hoped it to, and that’s just a great way for us to reliably get through months, if it’s really slow or a lot of people are needing stuff for free. But also, in a yearly span, we hit our break-even in our first year. We’re in a place where we can do more events, so we can diversify how we fund the program. But it’s been really rewarding to get to put some of my beliefs and politics and put them into practice. I believe in the good faith of humanity. And we’re still standing a year later. 

MC: Who is the customer who came from the furthest away? 

KC: A lot of folks who have traveled the furthest distances didn’t come just for the store. We get a lot of folks from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont. A lot of people who had this as an intentional part of their trip here. I had a family from Arkansas who came to Maine because of MTN, because of the state’s protective laws, and came into the store after they moved here. After they got settled, they took a trip down here and had a whole day, it was a super big treat. That was really powerful. 

We’ve also seen the effects of this space ripple out of the queer community - we’ve been able to work with so many new Mainers who have utilized our pay it forward, pay what you can programs. And it’s made a huge difference to families who are on tight budgets, who aren’t being helped as much as they were promised they would be. And we’re such a tiny small piece of helping folks in need, but it’s really special to be a part of that. We’re not just here for trans and queer folks, we’re here for everyone. 

Safe Combinations is open Friday through Sunday from 12-6p and Mondays from 1-6p. To schedule a donation drop-off, find out more about our binder program, or sign up to volunteer in the thrift store, visit the website!