The flea market November 3, 2014

At this blog’s inception, I had considered naming it “Fifty New Things”.  I expected that I might actually relax a bit after retirement and use my newfound free time to explore parts of the Bay Area that I had ignored for thirty years.  Of course, that free time was quickly sucked into music and art, and Fifty New Things morphed into The Passaggio.

Yesterday, though, I did make some traction on my original intention, and it was all because of the fall time change.  The crack of dawn came so early and the weather was so fine that I was compelled to get out and about right that minute.  I knew there was some kind of massive flea market held the first Sunday of each month in Alameda, so I checked online, and sure enough there it was – the Alameda Point Antiques Faire. I grabbed my gear and a couple of collapsible bags just in case, and I was off.

I had set my iphone to map the route, but there was really no need to check it.  By the time I was headed south on 880, I folded into a stream of cars heading through the tunnel to Alameda.  I followed them to a gigantic parking lot, which in fact was the site of the Navy airfield in times past.   Noting that my parking row was labeled “U”, I joined the line of human cattle with their carts and buggies as we trod past T, S, R etc, with a vista of colorful shipping containers and enormous white cranes along the loading docks to our right.  Arriving at the entrance at precisely 9 am when the admission price drops to $5, hundreds of us charged through with anticipation.

I methodically wended my way up and down the rows (also lettered) to the right of the large center aisle, checking out the scene but not committing to a purchase and fueling myself all the while with leftover Halloween candy.  I passed by white-awninged stalls devoted to recycled linen grain sacks, lighters, brass tchotchkes, cigar paraphernalia, Bakelite bangle bracelets, and colorful old Corningware and Creuset cookware.  But for an event touted as an “antiques faire”, there was a lot of junk, some stuff so forlorn and creepy that I just had to pass by as quickly as I could.  Yet people seemed to love it and were loading up their large flat shopping carts and waiting at the loading zone as though they were at Ikea.

I came away with only two small purchases – a few glyphs from an old metal typeset and two old photos of downtown Point Reyes Station circa 1900 – and a small start on my list of fifty new things.  In fact, if you add in zumba, the World’s Series, and the many new performance venues I’ve been to in the past year, I'd say I'm not doing too badly.