SWAPPING MALLS FOR THE GREAT OUTDOORS

Patty Williams wasn’t disappointed when she drove from Corona searching for just the right dress to wear to holiday parties. “Oh, I knew they’d have (it) here,” she said as she tried on an imported beaded dress at the swap meet at the Orange County Fairgrounds.

Modeling in front of a full-length mirror hanging from a tent pole, Williams was one of several women trying on the dresses and furs offered by Kay James, who has been operating an outlet at the swap meet for 10 years.

The dresses, imported from India and priced at more than $100, go quickly, James said. Each weekend of the year, at locations scattered throughout Orange County, swap meets are swarming with deal-seeking shoppers. But just before Christmas, business booms, operators said.

Crowds have nearly doubled at the Orange County Fairgrounds swap meet in recent weeks, with as many as 60,000 shoppers on weekend days. Attendance at the Pacific Drive-in theater swap meets in Orange and Anaheim have jumped 20%, company spokesmen said.

According to those who comb the aisles of area swap meets, the lure is the oddity of it all and the possibility that “just the right thing” might be had for a bargain price.

Lori Hill, an administrator at the Orange County Fairgrounds’ corporate office, said the variety of merchandise at swap meets is one reason for their popularity during the holidays. “We have a saying here: ‘Everything under the sun.’ ”

And, she added, “The weather is nice. People have a lot of fun. . . .”

Susan Heeger of Newport Beach agreed. She Christmas-shops at swap meetings because, she said, “it gives you the opportunity to be outside and not crowded into a mall with the pre-Christmas panic going on. In a store you’ve got to make your way inch by inch past things you don’t want. But at a swap meet, you can move very quickly into different things, from plants to mirrors to paintings to baby dresses, and it gives you acres and acres of stuff.”

On a recent Saturday, Debra Miller of Orange parted with a few hundred dollars at the fairgrounds to buy her husband of 13 years a new wedding band. “He has a white-gold band, and I thought this would be a nice change,” said Miller, who said she bought herself a gold nugget band Seiko watch from the same vendor several months ago.

Several aisles over, 6-year-old David Lillard had his eyes on a Dominator, the must-have skateboard of the moment, resplendent with gaudy graphics and lime-green wheels.

His mom, Diane, finally acquiesced, on the condition that the board stay in the closet until Christmas morning.

On a recent Sunday, Robert and Lillian Gomez of Garden Grove loaded two carts full of toys for their children at the Pacific swap meet in Orange.

“In shopping centers you can get the same kind of thing, but it will cost twice as much,” said Cinda Raymon of Huntington Beach. She left in the Christmas spirit, her arms full of homemade, holiday ornaments for her friends at the office.