Sales Opportunity
I have been trying to get my friend Cynthia to the Long Beach flea market for a very long time. It is my favorite, by far, of all the Southland flea markets, held on the third Sunday of the month at Veterans Stadium. Cynthia, a prodigious collector, always had (lame) excuses.
Finally I decided that the only way was to make a weekend of it. We would spend Saturday morning at garage and yard sales in Long Beach, then check into a nearby hotel, have a great meal and, come Sunday morning, be at the Long Beach swap as early as possible.
Although I go to the Long Beach flea market about six times a year, it never feels like I’m in Long Beach. You can’t see the Queen Mary or downtown at all. The market is tucked away near the airport, off the San Diego Freeway. Since I don’t live near there, I went on the Internet and looked at the local paper’s classifieds the day before we left. I just typed in keywords “garage” and “yard” and “estate” and got 14 listings. I eliminated a few obvious duds, which left six that sounded promising. Then I plotted them on the Thomas Bros. Map book.
Going from one garage sale to the next turned out to be a de facto tour of the city. Our first stop, about 8:30 a.m., was at a small warehouse, run by an estate liquidator, in a dreary commercial district. The Oriental rugs were nice looking but not for us. The small items were all in locked cabinets and had professionally appraised price tags. Depression glass vases for $200. Somebody here was using a price guide. No fair.
The reason to go to garage sales is that people don’t know what they’ve got. Save the price guides for the flea markets.
The second sale was inside a home. Most of the items were pretty old and weary. But I found an ecru crocheted tablecloth for $15 that, out of its macabre context, will look great thrown over my floral sofa.
Our third stop was what I call a nothing-better-to- do-so-let’s-clean-out-the-closet garage sale. Nothing was old enough for us (my cutoff is 1955; Cynthia’s is 1975).
Things picked up when we hit a better neighborhood, El Dorado Park Estates near El Dorado Park, where a professional garage sale organizer was putting on a house sale. There were dozens of cars parked out front and a line to pay the cashier. We found typical garage sale items like old board games, but also some nice silver and well-worn old things. I snatched up a silver creamer without a top, which would make a great flower vase, for $5. Cynthia said she would have bought it if I’d put it down.
We broke for breakfast at 10:30 at a nearby so-so coffee shop, Huffs (Wardlow Road and Norwalk Boulevard). This is how I’d always pictured Long Beach: old-fashioned, tidy, Midwestern. We perused the local paper while we ate to see if there were more sales listed. There were. So we headed for one just blocks from our pancakes. If we’d been in the market for furniture and tools, we’d have hit pay dirt.
Our last stop was closer to downtown, in a funkier neighborhood near Redondo Avenue and Anaheim Street, and the items were funkier too--more to my liking. I passed up an old wicker rocker only because I couldn’t get it in my Altima, but scored on three flower pots.
By 1 o’clock, the pickings were getting slimmer and we were exhausted, so we headed to the hotel on Pine Avenue and Shoreline Drive in downtown Long Beach. Finding out about hotels in Long Beach also had required some Internet research. Guidebooks seem to think the only place to stay in the city is the Queen Mary. But the Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau (Internet https://www.golongbeach.org) listed all the hotels. No sense staying in a B&B; (although Long Beach has two that sounded terrific) because we’d be leaving well before breakfast. From the several big chain hotels clustered downtown, I picked the Hyatt Regency--for no particular reason, but it turned out to have the best view of the harbor. We paid an extra $10 to guarantee a room with a view ($119). The room itself defined the term “uninspired.” Corporate blah. While I could see the Queen Mary from my bed, to really get the full view (Shoreline Village, Rainbow Lagoon, the harbor) we had to stand at the window.
I’d heard a lot about Pine Avenue, the heart of Long Beach’s downtown revival. We decided to have dinner there. We could have walked; it’s only a third of a mile from the hotel. But the red shuttle bus was right at the foot of the driveway, and it was uphill. Pine Avenue was bursting with sidewalk bands, and every restaurant and bar was packed. On a Saturday night, it’s like a smaller version of San Diego’s Gaslight District.
We chose L’Opera, in a historic building, and sat at a window table. We split polenta with mushroom sauce as a starter. Divine. We would have split a salad had we known they are almost entree size. I had a spinach, steak and Gorgonzola salad, and Cynthia had sun-dried tomatoes, peppers and corn in a strawberry vinaigrette. We could have quit there, but we had ordered pasta: two different raviolis. Stupendo. And there was a little live music as an opera singer roamed the room.
The next morning, since I was determined to get to the flea market early (it opens at 6:30), there was no way I would agree to a restaurant breakfast. I’d be a wreck, checking my watch every 30 seconds. And the food at the flea market is dreck. So we ordered room service, requesting a 6:15 arrival. And the knock on the door came at . . . 6:15. Very impressive.
We arrived at 7:15 (it’s an easy cross-town jaunt), and the parking lot was already packed. Cynthia and I have a shopping history that goes way back, and it rarely meshes. I think she goes too slowly. She thinks I go too fast and miss things. As it turned out, Cynthia was in a dormant stage, meaning that she wasn’t buying, just checking prices against what she’s paid over the last 20 years so she could cluck now and then. She was at her best, keeping my pace.
We were there three hours and I had my arms full (plant stand, tablecloth, blackboard) when Cynthia broke her dormancy. The set of six glasses with carnival animals painted on the sides, just like the ones her mother used to make root beer floats in, weakened her resolve. But she was obviously rusty: She was about to give the dealer the tag price ($25) because she’d seen them in a shop for $75. “Still,” I said through clenched teeth, “offer $20.” That’s what friends are for.
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Budget for Two
Gas: $6.00
Hyatt, 1 night: 119.00
Parking: 9.00
2 breakfasts: 32.00
Lunch, Huffs: 9.00
Dinner, L’Opera: 73.00
Flea market
admissions: 9.00
FINAL TAB: $257.00
Hyatt Regency Long Beach, 200 S. Pine Ave.; tel. (562) 491-1234. Antique Outdoor Market, Long Beach Veterans Stadium, Lakewood Boulevard and Conant Street; tel. (323) 655-5703.
