Mall Offers Pastimes Aplenty : Hobby City in Anaheim Is a Veritable Mecca for Those Who Tinker

Carol Dearcos needed some plastic bumblebees.

The Buena Park mom wanted the little yellow ornaments for a birthday cake that she was baking for her 3-year-old nephew. “It’s a Pooh cake,” Dearcos explained. “It needs to have bees on it.”

Her quest took her down Beach Boulevard just past Ball Road directly to the one place where such things are most likely found. “This is nice,” she said, surveying a shop devoted exclusively to cake-decorating supplies.

The shop is in Hobby City, Orange County’s outdoor mall of esoterica.

All told, there are 23 hobby shops on this 12-acre plot featuring everything from pets, pianos and pottery to coins, collectibles and baseball cards. There is also a 24-passenger miniature train that carries customers along 750 feet of track, baby bunnies wandering freely on the grounds and a downsize replica of the White House containing a museum of 5,000 dolls.

“It’s not your average strip center,” said Allan Ansdell Jr., 28, who operates the train and a shop specializing in Cabbage Patch dolls. “It has to do with family togetherness.”

It was precisely with that in mind, in fact, that Ansdell’s grandparents--Jay and Bea DeArmond--founded Hobby City in 1955. Now 80 and the maven of the mall, Bea DeArmond dates her own interest in hobbies back to the 1930s when her dad used to make jigsaw puzzles that the family would later then spend hours hunched over a table to assemble.

“It kept everybody occupied during the Depression,” recalls DeArmond, whose own hobbies have ranged from the antique doll collection she began at age 12 and still maintains today, to stamps and coins, rocks and gems, teddy bears, archery and gun collecting.

“Hobbies keep families together,” she said. “You won’t find a child with hobbies in Juvenile Hall; a hobby-minded child is a good child.”

Given those values it wasn’t surprising when, nearly 40 years ago, Bea and her husband decided to purchase the grounds of what was then a rundown chicken ranch as the site for their first entrepreneurial venture: a small antique shop on Beach Boulevard. The shop thrived and, over the years, they added other shops whose offerings include pianos, teddy bears, muzzle-loading rifles, aquariums, electric trains, plastic models, American Indian goods, stamps and coins, opals and gems, ceramics, porcelain doll-making supplies, dollhouse miniatures and, of course, cake making.

Each shop, DeArmond said, was opened initially by her or a family member and eventually leased to someone with a deep personal interest in its particular specialty. Of the 23 shops currently in the mall, she says, nearly a third are operated by relatives.

Jay DeArmond died in 1982, but not before building Bea a small version of the White House located at the back end of the Hobby City lot. Today she lives on the building’s upper floor directly above the doll and toy museum, which displays her 5,000-piece collection ranging from an ancient Egyptian doll to 450 Barbies.

“My husband asked me where I wanted to live, and I said the White House because the most important people in the world walked through its doors,” recalled DeArmond.

Hobby City today attracts some 500,000 visitors a year, all of whom she considers important. Like other attractions along Beach Boulevard and elsewhere, however, the mall has been hurt by the recent recession. In the past three years, DeArmond said, business has dropped about 33%.

Yet she is not letting bad economic conditions hamper plans for growth. Already in the planning stages is Children’s Adventure Park, a two-acre educational theme park, which family members hope to open by spring. Among other things, according to Ansdell, it will feature train and airplane rides and a carousel. And DeArmond said she plans to add new hobby shops as long as space permits.

Indeed, space didn’t seem to be a problem on a recent sunny afternoon as shoppers strolled lazily along walkways past the tree-shaped teddy bear shop and the log-cabin Native American shop, or across lawns peppered with hopping bunnies.

“This is a very special place,” said John Hughes, 32, of Anaheim, relaxing on a bench while his two school-age children chased baby rabbits nearby. A lover of plastic car models and electric trains, Hughes said he has been coming to Hobby City for at least 15 years.

“These are not your usual bargain basement shoppers,” he said. “You don’t see these things in the average mall. This is a good place to come looking around and let your mind wander.”

Eileen von Berg of Whittier had done just that at the stamp and coin shop as a prelude to purchasing 14 commemorative silver pieces engraved with the likenesses of various types of guns. “I’m going to put them away in my safe,” she said of her newfound treasures. “This is a great place. I can’t imagine not being interested in something here.”

And over at the cake-decorating shop, Carol Dearcos had finally completed her seemingly impossible quest for the perfect plastic bumblebees. “Found them!” she announced happily to the cashier, holding up the two yellow ornaments. Her relief seemed evident as she reached into her purse. “I think I’ll be shopping here a lot,” Dearcos said. “I’m a good little baker. Now if I can just learn to decorate, I should be all set.”