PLAYTHINGS : Animal Attraction

I’ve lived in Venice long enough that very little shocks me, but when I first beheld Sadie May’s Magnet Hutch, a refrigerator-magnet boutique on the boardwalk, I almost fell off my skates. The galvanized steel walls of the tiny shop are plastered with magnetic three-dimensional animals, vegetables, movie stars, Wilma Flintstones, chocolate truffles, beer mugs and California rolls. Was this, I wondered, the end of civilization?

Mind you, I have nothing against refrigerator magnets. I’m human. I share the seemingly universal urge to stick photographs, coupons, invitations and other scraps onto my fridge. But I’m a purist. I prefer my magnets to be simple, brightly colored dots. A tiny basket with a bromeliad that you have to water seems a little over the edge to me.

“It’s a fun thing to collect for the whole family,” argues owner Alan Meyer, who opened Sadie May’s (named after his ex-wife’s Pekingese) in 1989. He stocks more than 10,000 magnets, ranging from 95 cents to $11.95. “Some people collect red magnets or cows or desserts” says Meyer, who had a customer drop $300 on every pig product in the place. Most customers are women, he says, and “a lot of them have outgrown their refrigerators. They’re doing scenes on cookie sheets and hanging them on the wall.”

I would sooner compose a suicide note out of a magnetic alphabet. But as I turn to leave, I notice a pug’s head staring at me from the wall. I have two real pugs and I’m sort of a fanatic. The saleswoman tells me it comes in black, too. “I’ll take both,” I reply.