We could stand here all day telling y’all how good the junk is. But we figure it means more coming from somebody else’s mouth.
The folks over at Sustainable Jungle put together their list of the best thrift stores in New Orleans – twelve shops across the whole city – and put Junk’s Above right there at number five. They called us “one of the most beloved thrift stores NOLA has to offer.” Beloved! We might get that printed on a shirt.
They also gave a shout to the figurine walls – Power Rangers, Toy Story, Disney, the whole crew watching you shop – and noticed the thing we care most about: the motto. Glass, wood, metal, porcelain. No flimsy plastic, no particleboard. They even listed us at one to two dollar signs on the price scale, which is a polite way of saying your wallet leaves happy.
Then there is Yelp, where eighteen reviews and counting keep saying versions of the same thing: 90s tees, old posters, funky hats, cool trinkets from decades past, and some of the lowest prices in the city. We did not pay anybody to say that. We do not have that kind of money. That is why the prices are low.
Road trip folks even map their routes through the shop on Roadtrippers. Imagine driving across three states and one of your stops is a warehouse full of doodads by St. Patrick Park. Honestly? Correct decision.
So do not take our word for it. Take theirs. Then come take some junk home. Saturday and Sunday, 11 to 5, 4626 D’Hemecourt St. in Mid-City. (504) 952-JUNK.
Folks walk in all the time, look around, and ask the same question: the store is all on one floor, so what exactly is above?
Fair question. Here goes the story.
Before there was a shop, there was just a pile of junk – a glorious, growing pile – stacked up on the second floor of a shoe store. The plan was simple: collect good junk, sell good junk. When somebody needed something from the stash, same answer every time: the junk is above, on the second floor. Say that enough times and it starts sounding like a name.
Now, the city had other plans. Code enforcement was not about to bless a junk operation running out of the top of a shoe store, so the whole pile needed a new home. It found one: the first floor of an old plumbing supply warehouse by St. Patrick Park in Mid-City. Solid building, good bones, and fun fact – it once held storage for Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville products. Rest easy, Jimmy.
Only problem? The new place has no second floor. The junk is decidedly NOT above anymore. But the name was already registered with the Secretary of State, and honestly, it had grown on us. So it stuck.
And before you ask – no, there is no secret second floor with the really good junk on it. And if there was, we sure would not tell you, because then it would not be a secret junk floor, would it?
Come see the first-floor junk for yourself. Saturday and Sunday, 11 to 5, at 4626 D’Hemecourt St. Call us at (504) 952-JUNK.
Y’all ever pick up a chair from one of them big box stores and feel like you just paid $200 for wet cardboard? Yeah. Us too. That’s exactly why “glass, wood, metal, porcelain” ain’t just something cute we say – it’s the whole rulebook here at Junk’s Above.
Walk in the shop and every piece of wood furniture you touch is real wood. Not veneer over particleboard, not “engineered” whatever-that-means. If it’s got drawers, they’re dovetailed by somebody who knew what they were doing, probably before your mama was born. Same with the metal – real steel, real brass, real cast iron, the kind of heavy that lets you know it’s not going anywhere. And the glass and porcelain? Give it a flick. Hear that? That’s the sound of something that was actually fired in a kiln, not squirted out of a plastic injection mold in a factory somewhere.
Right now on the floor we got vintage framed illustrations in real metal-and-wood frames, a leaded glass lamp shade with zero cracks (that’s a rarity, trust), real metal clocks that still keep good time, and a whole bin of metal lockboxes that have outlasted whoever locked them shut. None of it’s phony. All of it’s been somewhere and done something before it landed on D’Hemecourt St.
Here’s the thing about real materials – they get BETTER looking with age. Scratches on real wood tell a story. A little tarnish on brass just means it’s lived a life. You can’t say that about a laminate particleboard dresser from a warehouse store. That thing looks worse the day after you build it.
So when your money’s long, come find yourself something with some weight to it – something your grandkids will still be able to use. And if your money’s not so long, we got a dollar closet full of glass and porcelain knick-knacks that’ll do just fine too.
Real wood. Real metal. Real glass. Real porcelain. No phony particleboard. That’s the whole pitch.
Every money page and hub on junksabove.com, and the posts that feed each one
Drawn from the live internal links across 6 published posts and 6 pages, crawled 16 August 2026. Nothing is hand-placed: a branch is thick because posts link to it, and bare because none do.
Read it bottom-up.Roots — off-site proofTrunk — the domainHow we do it — the method hubsBare or broken — needs a leafBranch thickness = posts feeding it
Swipe the diagram sideways, or read the same tree as text below it.
The same tree in text — every node is a live link
How we do it — the method hubs
The definitive articles. Each one owns a concept, and every post that demonstrates that concept links up to it.
Method: every published post and page was fetched through the WordPress REST API and its outbound internal links extracted from the rendered body. A leaf counts once per post, only when that post links to the branch URL. Redirects were followed and reported rather than silently merged. Crawled 16 August 2026.
This tree is a scan, and a scan is only worth running if it tells you which department to walk to. Both doors below start from the same diagnosis. Take the skill file and run it yourself, or have us run it and hand you the findings — either way the routing table underneath says where each finding goes.
1 · Do it yourself
Take the skill file and run it
A complete, runnable skill file — the five layers, the seven-step method, the six defects, and the nine-check QA gate. Hand it to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or any agent with read access to your site. Apache-2.0: copy it, fork it, ship it inside your own product.
The scan is only worth running if it tells you which department to walk to. Start at Junk — we crawl junksabove.com, draw the tree, name the defects with the exact URLs and counts, and route you to whichever of the things below you actually need.
map-your-money-tree.skill.md — the full skill file, verbatim (for agents and for copy-paste)
---
name: map-your-money-tree
description: Draw any website as a money tree — trunk (domain), limbs (offer groups), branches (money pages and definitive hubs), leaves (posts that link up to them) — measured from the site's real internal links, then diagnose the six defects a sitemap hides and output a dated publishing plan. Use when someone asks "which of my pages actually make money", "why isn't my content converting", "map my site", "audit my internal links", or when a monthly MAA needs a structural section.
author: Dennis Yu — BlitzMetrics / Local Service Spotlight
license: Apache-2.0
version: 1.0 (2026-08-15)
references:
- https://blitzmetrics.com/money-tree/
- https://blitzmetrics.com/seo-tree/
- https://blitzmetrics.com/money-pages-vs-blog-posts/
- https://blitzmetrics.com/maa/
- https://blitzmetrics.com/9-triangles-framework-scalable-home-service-businesses/
- https://localservicespotlight.com/quick-audit/
---
# Map Your Money Tree
**Use this when** you need to know which pages on a site actually earn, and which of the
content already published is feeding them. Not "how much traffic does this page get" —
*what is connected to what, and in which direction.*
This is the structural half of [MAA](https://blitzmetrics.com/maa/). The leaf counts are
the Metrics. The bare and split branches are the Analysis. The publishing list at the end
is the Action. Redraw it monthly and the delta is the report.
## The one idea
**A leaf counts only when it actually links.**
Not when it is topically related. Not when it sits in the right category. Not when someone
meant to link it. The link is the measurement; everything else is a plan. Every number this
skill produces must be reproducible by re-running the crawl.
---
## The five layers
| Layer | What it is | How you know |
|---|---|---|
| **Root** | Off-site proof of the entity: Knowledge Panel, Wikidata, LinkedIn, YouTube, podcast appearances, press, review profiles. | It is not on the domain and you cannot edit it directly. |
| **Trunk** | The domain and its home page — the entity home. | It is the URL you would put on a business card. |
| **Limb** | A group of branches sharing an audience or a job — the offers, the method, a vertical. | It is how the site's own services page already groups things. |
| **Branch** | A money page, or a definitive article that owns a concept. | Someone converts on it, or it is the one canonical page for a topic. |
| **Leaf** | A post that links **up** to a branch. | It is dated, it flows through a feed, and its body contains a link to its branch. |
Roots and trunk are **Why**. Limbs and method branches are **How**. Money branches are
**What**. Leaves are **Proof**. A stranger — or a language model — should be able to read
all four off one page.
---
## Inputs
- The domain.
- Read access to every published URL and its **rendered** body (not raw — page-builder and
shortcode markup must be expanded so the links inside are visible).
- The site's own services page and main navigation, for the branch list and its grouping.
- Optional: the previous run's tree, for the delta.
---
## Procedure
### 1. Inventory every published URL
Posts and pages both, with id, URL, title, publish date, and rendered body.
On WordPress:
```
GET /wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=100&page=N&status=publish&_fields=id,link,title,content,date
GET /wp-json/wp/v2/pages?per_page=100&page=N&status=publish&_fields=id,link,title,content,date
```
Page until the `X-WP-TotalPages` header runs out. On any other stack, use a crawler that
returns rendered HTML. De-duplicate by (type, id) — retried requests double-count silently.
### 2. Extract internal links from every body
Match `href` values on the site's own host. Normalise: drop the query string and fragment,
force a trailing slash, lower-case the host. **Make the set unique per source page** — a
post linking to the same branch five times is one leaf, because the first link is the one
that carries the value.
```js
const RX = /href="https?:\/\/(?:www\.)?example\.com(\/[^"#?]*)/g;
const outs = [...new Set([...html.matchAll(RX)].map(m => m[1].replace(/\/+$/,'') + '/'))];
```
For a personal brand site, also match the company domains — its money pages usually live
on another host, and they still count as branches.
### 3. Build the inbound index
Invert the map: for every URL, the list of posts and the list of pages that link to it.
Count them **separately**. Theme headers and footers are pages linking to pages; only body
links from posts are leaves.
### 4. Name the branches from the site, not from memory
Take the money pages off the services page and the main navigation, in the grouping those
pages already use. Add the definitive articles — the pages that own a concept. Do not
invent a tidier taxonomy than the one the site presents to a visitor: if your tree
disagrees with the navigation, the tree has just found its first defect.
### 5. Resolve redirects and duplicates before counting
Request each branch URL and follow the chain. Merge redirected URLs into one branch and
**report the merge** rather than hiding it. Two live 200s for one offer is a split branch,
not two branches. This is the step everyone skips and where most findings are.
### 6. Draw it to scale
Branch thickness and foliage density from the leaf count on a **square-root** scale, so a
300-leaf branch does not visually annihilate a 30-leaf one. Bare branches drawn bare.
Nothing placed by hand — if the drawing is prettier than the site, the drawing is lying.
### 7. Publish it on the site it maps
As a live page with every node a real link — never a screenshot. Ship three synchronised
forms on the same URL: the diagram (inline SVG), the identical structure as a **visible**
text outline, and `ItemList` JSON-LD naming each branch, its role, its content type and its
inbound count. The picture is for humans; the other two are for agents.
---
## The six defects — and where each one routes
Diagnosis is worthless without a destination. This is a scan that names the department.
| # | Defect | What it looks like | What it costs | Routes to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | **Bare branch** | A live money page with zero posts linking to it | Nothing on the site has ever pointed a visitor at the thing you sell | Content — one customer story per bare offer |
| 2 | **Split branch** | Two live URLs for one offer (usually a page and a post) | Internal links divide; neither ranks as well as one would | Plumbing — pick one, 301 the other, consolidate |
| 3 | **Redirect tax** | Many internal links pointing at a URL that 301s | Every link takes the slow road; often includes the main nav | Plumbing — rewrite links to the destination |
| 4 | **Broken target** | Internal links pointing at a 404 | Invisible in analytics, because nobody clicks a link they cannot see | Plumbing — restore or repoint |
| 5 | **Inverted tree** | Leaf counts fall as price rises | The cheapest offer carries the most proof; the most expensive carries none | Strategy — decide what you are actually selling |
| 6 | **Canopy with no branches** | Hundreds of posts linking to each other and almost nothing structural | Looks enormously productive, converts nothing | Personal brand — wire the proof to an offer |
Also check the roots. A tree with no off-site proof — no Knowledge Panel, no consistent
`sameAs`, no third-party corroboration — is standing in loose soil no matter how good the
canopy looks. That routes to entity/authority work.
---
## The QA gate — nine checks, all must pass
A wrong tree is worse than no tree, because people act on it.
1. **Every node resolves.** Status recorded for each branch; no 404s; every 301 shown as a redirect rather than silently followed.
2. **Counts are reproducible.** Re-run the crawl; identical numbers. Drift means the extractor is matching something other than links.
3. **Counts are unique per source.** One post linking three times counts once.
4. **Navigation excluded.** Only body links from posts are leaves.
5. **No branch invented.** Every branch appears in the site's own navigation, services page, or definitive-article set.
6. **No money page missing.** Cross-check against the services page and main menu. A money page absent from the tree is the worst error — an invisible bare branch reads as a branch that does not exist.
7. **Duplicates consolidated.** Split URLs appear as one branch, flagged, with both URLs named.
8. **Text outline matches the diagram.** Same nodes, counts and order — that is what agents and screen readers read.
9. **Date and method stated.** A tree without a crawl date is a claim, not a measurement.
---
## Output
1. **The diagram** — inline SVG, every node an anchor, light/dark, no runtime JS.
2. **The text outline** — visible, nested, live links, counts, health flags.
3. **The schema** — `ItemList` JSON-LD, one entry per branch.
4. **The findings** — the defects above, each with the specific URLs and counts.
5. **The action list** — dated, ordered by cost-to-fix, one line per bare branch.
6. **The delta** — versus the previous run. Any branch still bare after a redraw is a branch nobody has decided to sell.
## Definition of done
- Every branch on the services page and main nav appears in the tree.
- Every count is reproducible and every URL resolves or is flagged.
- The page carries diagram + outline + schema on one URL.
- Every defect names a destination, not just a problem.
- The next publishing action is unambiguous to someone who did not run the audit.
## Cadence
Monthly on an active site. The value is in the delta, not the snapshot. A metric you look
at once is a screenshot.
---
*Method: <https://blitzmetrics.com/money-tree/> · Framework: <https://blitzmetrics.com/seo-tree/> ·
Page-versus-post rule: <https://blitzmetrics.com/money-pages-vs-blog-posts/> ·
Want it run for you: <https://localservicespotlight.com/quick-audit/>*
Look at these old, dusty dudes. They need a good home, if you ask me.
Transforming an old piece of junk into a new piece of furniture never gets old. If you’ve ever taken a belt sander to a table or sewn a new cover onto an old chair, you know what I mean.
There’s just nothing in the world like fixin’ up a fixer upper.
When I came across these Samsonite stackable chairs from 1972, they were in pretty rough shape. They were buried under some vines in the New Orleans Bywater.
The metal legs were rusted, and the seats were grimey and had the stank all over them, but challenges just make life more interesting. So, I grabbed them up and took them back to the shop.
I Want Them Chairs Nice and Shiny
Step 1: Sand
Step 2: Paint
Once I removed the composite plastic seats, I sanded the metal legs down until that shiny chrome finish came back.
Then, I sanded the seats with 220 grit sandpaper to clean and smooth them out, and I shot ‘em with primer, then five cans of purple.
Maybe one can could have done, but when you start shaking that spray paint up and hear the propellant click click clicking, you just wanna keep spraying. Five cans gave them a nice, deep color that totally hides the faded ‘70s salmon underneath.
You would never know they didn’t pop right out of the factory yesterday.
Let’s Get Jazzed
Step 3: Jazz stripes
If you’ve lived in New Orleans for more than a year, just about anything will get you thinking about Mardi Gras. Looking at them purple chairs did just that.
As I was wondering where to go with them next, I couldn’t help thinking about king cakes and feather boas and all that purple and green jazz.
Five cans gave them a nice, deep color that totally hides the faded ‘70s salmon underneath.
So why not jazz them seats up a bit? A simple tape design and some green paint and you’re ready for the Mardi Gras season, champ. These are seats you can put out on your porch or on the neutral ground and not only be comfy but be comfy with some style.
Even better, put two stripes on one seat and only one on the other, and you done kicked it up a notch or three. Why two stripes on one seat? Art!
…and the bonus of covering the blemish I made when I dropped the circular saw on one of the chairs. Oops. Everybody who’s a human gets a case of the butterfingers once in a while, am I right?
But I can’t complain too much. You think a float rider on one of them Nola floats is gonna miss seats these bad boyz? Psh.
These chairs are all dressed up and ready to go!
Putting the Finishing Move on Them Chairs
Step 4: Joining table
With the purple and green seats all nice and fresh, I reattached them to the shiny chrome legs, stood back, and had a look. They were certainly living a better life than before, but were they living their best life? Something was still missing.
I had a sit and a think, and eventually I figured there was just about no better way to put the finishing move on these puppies than to link them up.
You think a float rider on one of them Nola floats is gonna miss seats these bad boyz? Psh.
It’s always nice to have a spot for your drink when you sit — especially if you’re out on the parade route–and a little buffer between the chairs for those of us who like our personal space seemed to fit the bill.
So, I ripped some pieces of heart pine for the joiners and used some laths, on bead board for the tabletop.
Laths are used everywhere — under roof shingles, in walls and ceilings, in lattice and trellis work — so you can always count on them for some quick and stylish borders to your tables or anything you want to frame.
Three in One
Only thing left was to join the chairs to the table, and hooray! Five hours of labor and a $40 investment later, and we have ourselves a mighty comfy set of chairs with a joining table — three in one!
Not only do they hold me up, but the little table holds just about any canned beverage. Perfect for a parade, football experience, or a nice southern evening on your front porch.
Perfect chairs for sitting back and enjoying some antique beer.
The only question left is how much to sell it for. . . .
Are records making a comeback? People stop by and ask if we have any new records more than any other item we carry. It’s attend for sure, so when are cds going to make a comeback? They are easier to store and have better sound quality than a record… Maybe we will pick up on the minor sound details a cd gives off much like the scratchy sounds of a record??? I hope they get popular once again because I have over a thousand of them. Stop by to check out the sweet collection of 1996-2005 alternative rock cds. I need to get rid of these.
Green thumb I am not, but it may work by chance. That is, not doing a dang thing with these succulents and still they grow. One of the employees has an indoor greenhouse with multiple tiny plants. Most are of the succulent type. Some grow well while others do not, she states. She’s so jealous of the outside garden at the store because it seems all plants continue to thrive.
“What’s my secret?” she asks me.
“Not a dang thing.” I say.
I scout out items made completely out of metal. Depending on the item, these usually date to pre 70’s. Metallic items make excellent outdoor planters since they take some time to break down. Wood will start to deteriorate over time, and plastics become dingy. Look out for cash registers, lawn mowers, typewriters, metal buckets, tire rims, etc. Left outdoors, these junks will start to patina over time. They will rust, ya dummy, and look great (if you’re into that). Also look for ceramics (toilets, sinks) if you like white junk.
Heres a tip: Place air filter material at the bottom of the objects for better drainage.
Most times, rocks are used to hold the compost while allowing water to drain. The problem occurs when you want to change out the soil or repot the plant and the rocks become mixed in with the soil. You’ll have to redo the rock layer while your soil contains more rocks in it. Use filter material, dish scrub pads, or something similar. Don’t use sponges. They hold in moisture creating bacteria.
Back to the succulents. I’m not sure why they stay alive for me outside in the sun. I’m sure they get shading from the building and don’t require much water. Maybe they love the fact that they are in the drawers of a cash register.
So plant your succulents in an all metal item and you’ll get the looks.
There was something about this chair that I found on the side of the road. The seat was missing and I told myself I didn’t have enough time to redo, upcycle, fix, etc this little piece of crap. So I offered it up for $1. It sat in the store for about 3 months. No one wanted it. I couldn’t throw it out. I liked something about it. Was it junk? Real wood, pan head screws, and a nice hand carved backing… fine, I’ll do it. With some copper and gold paint I started the revival. Was it the color I wanted, not really but I need to start using what I have and I have an abundance of gold and copper paint. Then the seat??? Uhh, foam with fabric? Patch a piece of ply wood in? It had several holes for the twine…. ok, got it. Parachute chord that bad boy. And 3 Pelican games later there you go. The end.
There were several candles that looked like candy canes, so that was a must have. The rest was a grab bag of Christmas items. I don’t know why I get more Christmas stuff because it doesn’t really sell well. Tough titties, it’s all good I guess until I go broke. :(l
