At the Swap Meet, you can find most anything you need. There is rubber dog poop to hide in your sister’s bed or silicone buttocks to augment a flat, droopy ass. If you’re short on roughage, there are shiny heaps of produce at each entrance, tended by suntanned older women in straw hats and sweatstained t-shirts.
For the health-conscious among us, you can find protein-shakes, organic garbanzo beans, Acai tea, and even E-cigarettes. Or if you need a new companion, you can buy a bowl of goldfish, a pair of Ringneck Parakeets, or choose from a wide selection of Monk’s Parrots, pristine Cockatoos, chubby Blue-Fronted Amazons, or a veritable flock of canaries.
There is fine art and tawdry jewelry, Supershams (four for five dollars) or seashells (three for a buck). You can find books, bikes, bells, and brazzieres, hand tools worthy of a Nazi-era Dentist looking to pull a few teeth, or a Master Mechanic trying to make a quick tire swap on an Indy racecar. There are steel guitars, harmonicas, loosely-strung fiddles and old, dented trumpets, together with sheet music sufficient for a 30’s Swing ensemble or a Mexican Mariachi band.
It’s the home of the world’s smallest vacuum cleaner, Florida’s largest Elvis Presley charcoal painting, and the last surviving collection of 78 rpm records (but sadly, no player). If you need to make a quick getaway, there’s a ’59 Edsel (make offer), three Harley Sportsters, a cherry-red 2004 Corvette for $24K, or a Sandbuggy with a Volkswagon engine and gleaming exhaust (Today Only – $4500).
I’ve sometimes fantasized about building a house from goods purchased only at Ikea, with its rows and rows of Chinese-made furnishings, housewares, flooring, appliances, and lighting, but at the Swap Meet, I could do it for 1/10th the price, and impress my friends with my eclectic tastes to boot.
There doesn’t seem to be much swapping going on here at the Swap Meet though, unless it happens behind the cheap walls and dirty fabric doorways, out of earshot of the Meet’s many visitors. Or maybe they do it in secret, at late-night Swap Meet enclaves.
The people here are as varied as the goods. One can marvel at the gaggles of little old ladies counting their change from plastic coin purses, while their husbands huddle together at green-painted picnic tables drinking cheap beer and recounting old war tales to one another. They have poor eyesight and even worse hearing, as evidenced by the thousands of shoppers and hundreds of storekeepers bumping into one another and shouting in more languages than the United Nations.
It can be a dangerous place. Turning the corner, I was nearly run down by a wayward Power Cart driven by a sunglassed woman who easily topped the scales at 400-hundred pounds. I could have been crushed.
But best of all, on your way out the door they sell foot massagers, $10 each or 2-4-20, perfect for cheering up tired feet after a long day at the Swap Meet.
My favorite place!