Cool Stuff: Pictures from the Point

For one reason or another, we've missed the Alameda Point Antiques and Collectibles Faire for the last few months. But Nick and I were determined to get there yesterday, and it was wonderful to be back. The weather was gorgeous, the people-watching excellent, and the offerings enticing. I was especially drawn to the wealth of vintage-industrial wares at the Faire this month. Oh, to live in a loft!

(I wasn't the only local blogger snapping shots at the flea market, of course. It's fascinating how different people can experience the same thing in such varied ways, isn't it? Hannah, for one, focused on whimsical vintage ephemera. I have a feeling Victoria was there, too, and will soon be posting her own snaps. I wonder what drew her eye?)

Here's what caught mine:

All that great stuff, and what did we bring home? Four vintage melamine plates for $4. Like most everyone else, we're trying to curtail our spending as much as possible right now. Sigh.

(P.S. My previous trips to the Point are documented here and here.)

Cool Stuff: Flea Market Photography (Update)

September 2, 2007: With the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge closed this weekend, it was an unusually quiet morning at the Alameda Antiques Faire. (All the better to get dibs on the good stuff, my dears ... )

Nick and I snapped up a bunch of vintage barware for practically nothing -- tumblers and highball glasses and such; I guess we'll need to start drinking the hard stuff now to make use of it.

But my absolute favorite finds were the vintage photographic prints above. We'd already been scavenging for hours when I spotted them. It was hot, we were almost at the end of the stalls, and we were tired and thirsty and ready to call it a day. I almost passed the booth by, but something made me stop and look through a plastic bin filled with large, decades-old black and white prints.

I'm so glad I did -- it felt like the sort of thrilling, unexpected discovery you go to flea markets secretly hoping to make, but rarely do. Before long there was a crowd gathered around and three or four of us were pawing through the prints and snatching out our favorites to hand off to waiting friends and partners while the vendor filled us in on how she came upon them.

The photographs, she told us, were taken by a woman named Helen Brethauer who lived here in Oakland. She was active in the local photography club in the Fifties and Sixties and exhibited a bit here and there. When Ms. Brethauer passed away recently, her sister apparently set out a giant stack of her prints for the trash pickup, along with the other discarded contents of her home. (Can you imagine?) Luckily, the woman I bought them from happened by and asked if she could take the lot before they ended up at the dump.

Now these four are mine ($5 apiece!). I can't wait to frame them and hang them opposite some similar tree silhouette illustrations in our family room -- I think that together, they'll make a nice little gallery.

I love their large size, their stark moodiness, and the fact that they were shot in my adopted hometown years before I was even born -- at least one, and perhaps all, around Oakland's lovely Lake Merritt. But I think that what I love about these most of all is the sense that the woman who took them was absolutely passionate about her art -- the hundreds of arresting images taken over what must have spanned decades leave little doubt about that.

I'm so curious about her now. Who was she? Did she ever achieve any minor local renown? What was her life like? Scattered through the pile were several shots of a nattily dressed man casually leaning against a classic roadster somewhere along Highway 1, his fedora cocked to the side to shade his eyes from the sun. Was he her husband? Some long-forgotten suitor? Were the bright-cheeked, closely shorn young boy and the beribboned girl in many of the photographs her children -- and if so, where are they now, and why would they allow the products of their mother's creativity and love of photography to be put out with the trash?

Full of questions, I rushed home to plug her name into Google and see if anything popped up. But alas, there are still some mysteries that internet sleuthing can't solve for us.

Whoever you were -- here's to you, Helen. I'll be proud to display your work in my home.

December 14, 2007: I just got a note from the son of one of Helen's friends, who included this photo of her at the pool at the San Francisco Zoo (did you even know they had one?) sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. In addition to being a talented photographer, Ms. Brethauer was quite the bathing beauty! (Thanks so much for sending the snapshot, John.)

Cool Stuff: Flea Market Holidayana

We headed out bright and early yesterday morning to brave the arctic cold at the Alameda Antiques and Collectibles Faire, which we'd missed the last couple of months. I'm telling you, there's nothing that gets me going like a hot gyro and a bunch of weird old stuff at 7:30 in the morning.

The vendors there had dusted off their vintage holiday goodies, which added a festive touch to the freezing affair.

A few things that caught my eye:

I was so tempted by the assorted elves and gnomes on display.

Mary and her homey, St. Nick

Is it just me, or do life-sized plastic Santas kind of freak you out, too?

I snagged a bunch of vintage glass ornaments for a quarter to a buck apiece. I love how they look massed in a bowl or other vessel.

The vendor wanted $300 for the aluminum tree on the right. It was totally minty and came with a working color wheel, but I just got a similar tree and color wheel on eBay for about a quarter of that price -- including shipping.

Nick and I always joke about creating a menagerie out of cement animals in our front yard. Somehow, though, I suspect our neighbors would be less than thrilled.

After the flea market, we bopped over the bridge for a quick lunch South of Market before hitting the Art Deco & Modernism Sale -- which, truth be told, was a bit of a snoozer. Still, it's always a kick to see the sharp men in their spats and fedoras and the glamorous women in their Forties finery. Those people are just living a whole art deco life -- it's like anything after 1950 simply never happened for them. (Come to think of it, maybe blanking out the last 50 years or so of history isn't such a terrible idea.)

All in all, a lovely day.

Mark Your Calendar: A Weekend of Art, Music, Home Tours, and Antiquing

This weekend (October 5-7) is going to be such a whirlwind -- and we're going to have some very tough choices to make:

* On Friday afternoon and early evening, T-Bone Burnett (performing with friends like Neko Case) and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy will kick off San Francisco's free, three-day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park.

* Friday night, the Oakland Art Murmur holds its monthly "First Friday" art walk Uptown.

* Saturday's our big day at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (which, as the name implies, features a lot more than just bluegrass music). We're planning to catch some of our favorite alt-country, Americana, and just-plain-talented acts like Allison Moorer, the Whoreshoes, the Knitters, Nick Lowe, the Flatlanders (with Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock), Gillian Welch (above, at last year's fest), Los Lobos, and Steve Earle. (Again: Golden Gate Park. Free. Incredible music. Great people. Good food. Dog-friendly. What more inducement do you need?)

* Bright and early Sunday morning is, of course, the October installment of the Alameda Point Antiques & Collectibles Faire. We'll be there if we can manage to rouse ourselves after Saturday's events.

* After the Antiques Faire, check out the Shades of Green Home Tour, which highlights eight gorgeous homes and gardens that have been meticulously preserved and gently modernized in Oakland's lovely, historic Crocker Highlands neighborhood. A Green Design Expo features eco-friendly merchants, tradespeople, and other exhibitors. The event is a fundraiser for the public Crocker Highlands Elementary School. Tickets for the tour are $40 in advance, or $45 on the day; the Green Design Expo is free.

* Also Sunday in Oakland is the Rockridge Kitchen Tour, a charity fundraiser showcasing nine fabulously remodeled kitchens along Rockridge's leafy avenues. Tickets are $30 in advance, or $40 at the door.

* The Bluegrass Festival wraps up Sunday afternoon and evening with Jim Lauderdale, the Mekons, Doc Watson, Dave Alvin, and the always-luminous Emmylou Harris.

Whew!

Cool Stuff: One Faire Day

Nick and I had a rare treat on Sunday: Both of us were able to slip out early to the Alameda Antiques & Collectibles Faire while the kids were at friends' houses after Saturday-night sleepovers. Normally only one of us gets to go (that would be me), or the whole family attends together but we can't manage to get everyone out of the house until later -- and then we have to listen to the kids whine the entire time about how we're torturing them by dragging them out to look at a bunch of "old stuff." I'm sure their future therapists will hear all about this abusive behavior someday ...

(Question for you other flea-marketing parents: How do you do it? I see kids there with their parents every month, and they don't look like they're on the brink of mutiny like our kids always do. We've even tried to bribe them with the promise of churros and a small budget to find their own treasures, or attempted to make a game out of spotting things -- but all to no avail. If you have secrets for making flea markets a reasonably enjoyable family affair, I'd love to hear them.)

Anyway, I'm happy to report that the Faire's new location isn't much different from the old location, and that the gorgeous view of SF remains intact. We didn't have an agenda this month -- I'd already blogged the Faire and there was no one thing we were on the hunt for. In fact, we came home with only one $7 ceramic dish in which to toss keys on our entry table. (Sadly, Nick would not let me take home the cement garden deer, below.) But it was so nice to just wander around hand-in-hand, checking out the wares, chatting with the vendors, and enjoying the sunshine.

I snapped some pictures of things that happened to catch my eye, and only realized later that there were a few themes at work: I seemed to be drawn to turquoise (surprise, surprise), patinaed metal and shiny silver objects, old bottles, objects from the ocean, and, um, disembodied heads.

A photographic scrapbook of the day: