A Market for Nostalgia
Things can’t make you happy, they say.
But at 5:30 on a Sunday morning, traversing the freeways, at least 2,000 people believe otherwise. We are the early birds, on our way to the Rose Bowl flea market, to celebrate its 400th weekend since opening in 1969. Two thousand of us will arrive between 6 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. for the early bird special. We will pay $15 for the first crack at the collectibles and other merchandise. Between 2,200 and 2,400 vendors have gotten up even earlier to set up their booths. By closing time at 3 p.m., some 20,000 people will likely have passed through the gates, carrying or dragging their treasures, anticipating that delicious moment when they bring the “new family member” into the house, set it on a shelf or a table, and stand back to see how it changes an entire room.
The Wall Street Journal has ranked the Rose Bowl flea market in the top five antiques markets in the country. Five million people have attended since 1969, when Gary Canning, who had a background in organizing custom car shows, held the first Rose Bowl swap meet. It was the city of Pasadena that in 1980 requested the change from “swap meet,” which has as much cachet as a garage sale, to “flea market.” Vendors, who must have a Pasadena resale license, pay between $40 and $90 for their spots. Some have clearly been neighbors for decades. And those who want to join them currently must wait five years for the chance. At 6:30 a.m., beady-eyed collectors pace the rows with cell phones. “I bid on that two years ago,” one says, pointing to a large wooden deer, “he was asking too much for it then, and it’s still here.” Some folks are already leaving. One woman, with a cart full of life-size Jar Jar Binks of “Star Wars” fame, has clearly found what she came for.
Every few booths there is something familiar, something from childhood, like the glass dish for salt with the chicken-headed top, or the plastic Bambi. It gives the whole enterprise a dreamlike quality, and other flea-marketers know this. Gasps and squeals are common.
The East Coast has a reputation for better flea markets, perhaps because people had a few more generations to accumulate things, or because immigrants to the West carried fewer things to their new homes. But there’s no scarcity at this flea market. The nostalgia has a different vocabulary, perhaps--the rodeo imagery, the unique California pottery that lies side by side with Murano glass from Venice. Not everything is cheap. The immensely popular French linen booth, for example, has tablecloths for $700.
At a jewelry booth, a dozing vendor wakes up a little grumpy. “I never worked this hard when I was getting paid for it,” he says, referring to the real reason people buy and sell at flea markets. It’s the community of like-minded, often obsessive, endlessly creative and not particularly wealthy people. I find a beautiful hand-tooled silver bracelet with abalone inlay. There is no tag. “How about $45?” he says. “I have to have it,” I say, another commonly overheard expression. After we complete our transaction, he sends me on my way with a “Happy hunting!”
A few booths down the attraction is a pair of loom woven potholders, the kind schoolchildren made for generations, way too small to be useful. I pass deer antlers and a man dreamily playing a mandolin.
“I love it!” a rather well-dressed woman squeals. “It’s so weird!”
Further down the row, two men look at an enormous chandelier lamp. “Odd,” says the one with the ponytail. “That’s not odd,” says his companion in the suede fringed coat, “that’s tasteful.”
Out of the corner of my eye I spot the plaid tin lunch box I carried all through elementary school, surrounded by a neatly organized battalion of lunch boxes, a veritable history of public education in a single booth. Larry Jones of Simi Valley presides. He is used to people collapsing in front of him, reliving portions of their youth.
He’s been collecting metal lunch boxes since 1970. His firstfeatured Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon. Many of his boxes feature movie figures or TV favorites like the Partridge Family or the famous cowboy Hopalong Cassidy, who appeared on the very first metal lunch box in 1952. Jones’ favorite on display today is a box shaped and colored like a loaf of bread that sells for $110. “This was not a favorite among children,” he says. “One woman told me she [was one of] five siblings, and her mother just went to the store and bought five of these. They were all mortified.”
He prefers the boxes with signs of wear and tear, or even better, a child’s name and room number scratched on the back. A Munsters box for $250 has “Joey Vincent, rm #1A” scratched on the inside. The last metal lunch box, Jones says, was made in 1984. After a Florida lawsuit about an incident in which one little girl whaled on another with her box, companies stopped making them.
“Somebody had to collect these,” he says, shrugging since the mantle fell to him. He wears his favorite hat, which he got “somewhere in Asia.” The plaid lunch box, which Jones says was “the great American model,” is $35, and its very plainness tugs at me.
Out in the area beyond the collectibles there are arts and crafts, handmade hats and newer merchandise, like faux Limoges pieces for $5, and knockoff Pucci and Kate Spade bags that reportedly have women lining up 30 to 40 at a time, not to mention custom-fit toe rings, Beanie Babies galore and Cabbage Patch dolls.
Armado Villanueva has been selling the incense his wife makes for three years here. He makes holders, which he sells for $10 to $15, out of wine bottles that he fills with paint, then drills with three holes to hold the incense sticks.
A few booths down, lacy sleeves and rose-rimmed hats draw clusters of middle-aged women. Anita Gonzalez came from Mexico 10 years ago and worked in the garment district in L.A. Now she, her two children, husband and even her mother and niece pitch in to make Victorian dresses and hats. They sell their work exclusively at the Rose Bowl market. Two women stop me to offer me money for the black jacket with a teapot print that I am wearing. I hear only one argument in four hours, two women who both want a wooden sign that says Country Inn. Each claims to have seen it first. The vendor watches with a sly grin.
“Don’t tell me you’re into guns now,” a woman says to her husband as I wander past.
A tall, thin hipster in front of an enormous round ottoman says, “This is cool, in a ‘70s kind of way,” to his girlfriend.The crowd has many pregnant women in that eighth-month traditional nesting period. Several husbands, standing back while their wives dive in, mutter, “I can’t believe what they get for this stuff.”
Perhaps this is what dreams are made of after all--things. But wait, things can’t make you happy.
A woman dawdles in front of a booth selling glow-in-the dark T-shirts. “Gee,” she says to the vendor, “I’ve always wanted to glow in the dark.”
