Bored? Meet Mod-L-Mania, home to your new favorite pastime
By Ellen Griley

MOD-L-MANIA by ROSHEILA ROBLES

I’m not sure when the California Fourth Grade Mission Project was first introduced into the elementary-school curriculum, but it is something so strange, so (obviously) uniquely Californian, that all those little sugar-cube missions have gone from being a cheesy school assignment to a collective childhood memory shared by tens of thousands of citizens. Most people I know not only remember the mission they were assigned—or, if lucky, were able to choose—but where they were and whom they were with while building it.

For me, it was my father’s in-house office, with a soldering gun, a few pieces of Styrofoam, and a can of red brick spray paint—the gun intended for melting lines in the foam, which itself would eventually be painted to resemble the red-tiled roof of Mission San Rafael. It was the closest I ever came to model-building. (Though I was a tomboy when it came to sports, I still preferred playing with Barbie and her red convertible Ferrari to building tanks, troops and trucks.)

Today, Barbie (and her convertible) are long gone; Mission San Rafael, too. Yet it’s those nights spent soldering in my father’s office (as opposed to days spent with Barbie) that I remember most fondly, to the point that I’m now, as an adult, intrigued by model-building—by the assembly process and the patience it requires. And, as it turns out, I’m not alone—though to be fair, there aren’t too many of us. In fact, there is only one general-purpose hobby and model store in Long Beach: Bixby Knolls’s Mod-L-Mania.

On a recent visit to the nearly-decade-old shop, I was joined in the store by two older war veterans (both sitting in the back room, where a number of tools are available to model-builders) and a man inquiring about UFO kits. “All the kids today are playing on computers,” I overheard one of the veterans say to the other. I was drawn immediately to the stacks of soldier kits, everything from German Volksstrum and ski troop units to Chinese Volunteers and the rag-tag Viet Cong set (including a bicycle and over-the-shoulder missile launchers).

From there, I rounded the corner to the science section, featuring rocket kits for various age and skill levels, as well as a chemistry set, microscope set, rock tumbler, and a number of made-for-science-fair kits. My favorite? The bell/telegraph kit, featuring a kid on the box cover sporting an old-timey mustache.

The science kits are actually what bring the kids in, says Mod-L-Mania owner/sole employee Chuck Wilkinson, who instructs and assists students from the elementary level up to UCLA’s graduate schools with their fair projects. But it seems that once someone drops in, they’re hooked—and not just on science, but on models, too. And not just on the troops and soldiers (although they are very cool), but on cars (of every variety: the store sells a ‘63 Chevy Nova, a ‘92 Ford F-150 Flareside, and a 2005 Cadillac Escalade), ships (pirate ships, U-boats, the USS Missouri and New Jersey, plus a 1:400 scale version of the Queen Elizabeth 2), Star Wars and Star Trek air ships, and, of course, planes—both stationary and gas-powered.

Fancy an SR-71 Blackbird? Chuck can order one for you, from a 1:40 scale kit to an easy, snap-together model. Need to know where to fly that gas-powered plane once you’ve built it? Chuck can help you there, too—try Whittier or El Monte. Model building isn’t just for war-obsessed little boys and older men looking to capture their war-obsessed youth, but rather, Chuck says, anyone looking for a pastime. A few rows over from the soldiers, there are a few Yellow Submarine-era models of the Beatles; across from them, an Endeavor shuttle model, plus the International Space Station. “[Model-building] teaches you three things,” Chuck says: “how to follow directions, how to be organized, and most importantly, patience.”

Those are lessons we could all probably stand to brush up on. Now, if I could just get my hands on a mission kit.

MOD-L-MANIA 3908 ATLANTIC AVE | LONG BEACH 90807 | 562.290.0225 | MOD-L-MANIA.COM