(I'm categorizing an antiques-related post as "history." That works, right?)
I go antiquing and thrifting kind of a lot. I'm late to it, but I married into a family of semi-professional design gleaners, and have spent the last 8+ years learning the ropes—what's good, what's fake, when a seller doesn't know what they have (that's when you pounce), and maybe most importantly, getting a sense of the value of things. You can tell right away when you're in a tourist trap—they'll have only beautiful things, and everything will be so unattainably expensive that you'll wonder how they sell anything at all. Meanwhile some of the best deals require looking past a bunch of chintzy garbage—it's a slow pastime, a lifelong pursuit, and half the reason I visit the Oregon coast. Maybe it's not everyone's jam (hi Dad), but if it is:
Grand Marketplace just opened smack dab in the middle of town at SE Grand and Yamhill. I caught wind that the curio geniuses behind Paxton Gate, along with partner and general manager Andrea Jones, were behind it, and knew it called for a look-see.
It's pretty amazing. It has 22 different vendors, some of whom you might recognize (Animal Traffic, DIGS, Aurora Mills Architectural Salvage), very little filler, and the prices are mostly fair. (If you live in a world where a hand-painted gypsy carriage for just under two Gs seems like a bargain, as I apparently do.) If you've got a little dough to throw around you can find some really astonishing pieces—there's a Victorian-era bathtub/shower thing that is utterly amazing, and a steam-punk's wet dream (pun intended). If you're shrewd, you'll find some square deals. (Keep your head. That giant old wood dining table going for 10k may make you want to faint, but in New York it'd be going for twice that.)
They're also throwing what are planned to be monthly-ish flea markets in the back parking lot, with both their permanent vendors and then some, and on October 12 they're unloading what is tantalizingly described as "freight containers full of treasures straight from Europa." Also, on October 26 they're having a grand opening with live music that'll get going around 3 pm. But enough chitchat—here are some pics I snapped when I visited a few days ago:
