antiques by the tundra

Shannon and I headed out to Antiques by the Bay in Alameda at 6am this morning. We were all bundled up in layers, and felt well-prepared. We got there around 6:45am, and got parking right up front, which is pretty unusual for the antique fair. That should have been our first clue that this wouldn't go well.

The second clue was that there wasn't anyone selling tickets; we just walked right in. This place is usually chock full of vendors as far as the eye can see, and today there were only 3 rows of vendors. And most of them were still unloading or had barely started.

It was very windy, and the cold was a bit finger-numbing. We went through all the tables pretty quickly, not seeing anything that really spoke to us. We made our way back to the front, and as we were taking a second look at some things and commenting about how cold and windy it was, Shannon said the unspeakable: "It could be worse. It could be raining."

Literally on cue, it started sprinkling lightly, and then the sprinkle started getting heavier and the wind picked up even more. The vendors were scrambling to cover their wares or put it back in their trucks. I pulled out our umbrella, which felt pretty useless, and we decided to call it a day. The killer part is that we got back to the city and it was just after 8am. 8am, people!!! What the hell were we thinking?!?

I'm trying to resist going back to bed, but I think the urge to sleep (in my warm, warm bed) is going to win.

antiques by the bay, june '07

On the first Sunday in June, we went to our first ever "Antiques by the Bay", an enormous flea market across the bay at the docks in Alameda. It was quite an outing, as I was still on crutches with my cast. But we managed to snag a few fantastic things:







Not bad for our first try, eh? We also got a gorgeous stretched out black jaguar with cheap green eyes, and some incredible 1940s/50s pin-up calendar girls. I'll post photos of those when we put better eyes in the cat and get the pin-ups framed.