Looking—but not touching—at the Long Beach Antique Mall
By Ellen Griley

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

In E.L. Konigsburg’s popular children’s novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, 11-year-old Claudia Kincaid and her 9-year-old brother, Jamie, run away from their Greenwich home to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where they plan on living until they are ready to come home. The first order of business upon arriving at the museum? Finding a place to sleep later that night, after they hide from the guards:

“They wandered back to the rooms of fine French and English furniture. It was here Claudia knew for sure that she had chosen the most elegant place in the world to hide. She wanted to sit on the lounge chair that had been made for Marie Antoinette or at least sit at her writing table. But signs everywhere said not to step on the platform. And some of the chairs had silken ropes strung across the arms to keep you from even trying to sit down. She would have to wait until after lights out to be Marie Antoinette.”

It’s this very passage that has compelled me to hang on to From the Mixed-Up Files for going on 15 years, mainly because the underlying notion—what if we could play with all the things we’re forbidden to touch?—doesn’t just apply to children. It still floats in our fully formed adult minds, every time we enter a fancy department store, or museum, or—as is the case with the Long Beach Antique Mall—a place somewhere in between.

The Antique Mall isn’t fancy, or even a department store (it’s more like a cluttered, endless warehouse) but it bears comparison simply because you have to be careful with your body—take a corner too quickly (especially if you have a large bag) and you risk knocking over, say, a six-pack of unopened Coca-Cola bottles from the 1950s ($122). It also isn’t a museum, but there are enough ghosts walking around the place that it might as well be: here, you can view or purchase a moment from someone else’s life—a tangible memory, a living story—like one-time Orange County boy Alan Linde’s Merit Badge in Basketry ($2.50).

You’d easily be overwhelmed with the sheer size of the inventory if it weren’t all so fascinating to look at: a commemorative Jackie and John Kennedy salt shaker set; a sewing kit from El Rancho hotel in Las Vegas; old issues of Playboy and MAD; a Schlitz Styrofoam cooler; a metal Life & Times of Grizzly Adams lunchbox; a set of eight cardboard Pabst Blue Ribbon bar coasters; vintage dress patterns from the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s; and my personal favorite, an old Pep Boys matchbook featuring Manny, Moe and Jack on the back with tiny holes in their pants—that’s where you pull the matches.

Everywhere you turn, you can’t help but really—really—want to touch everything. And some of the time, you can—flip through (and smell) an old collection of Peter Arno’s illustrations ($5); pick up an empty old can of Weight Watchers Raspberry Cream soda; run your hand along the fabric of two perfect-condition 1950s barstools ($185).

But it’s the stuff that we probably can’t afford—that I, for sure, should not afford—the stuff with tiny, handwritten signs reading “Please, Don’t Touch”—that impresses the most. This is where I felt a little like Claudia Kincaid, wishing that I could stow away overnight in the Antique Mall so I could play with the pinball machine from 1969; score a pack of smokes from the 1940s cigarette machine ($995); step into the Record-Your-Own-Voice booth; pull the lever on the ’60s slot machine from Bally’s casino ($1200); phone a friend from the working-condition ’60s phone booth ($495); watch the numbers roll on the old gas station pumps; use the ’60s shoe shine machine; and finally, even if just for pretend, drop a dime in the fully restored 1956 7-Up vending machine ($3200).

And yet, thankfully, there is one important difference between Claudia and me: I have a credit card.

THE LONG BEACH ANTIQUE AND COLLECTIBLE MALL | 3100 E PACIFIC COAST HWY | LONG BEACH | 90804 | 562.494.2526