Sunday, April 28, 2013

A photo essay from my fascinating life!!

Last Sunday, we got it in our heads to go to Cape May because a) we adore it, and plan to move there, and b) I'm renting a space in the Cape May Antiques Center, and I wanted to see if I sold anything.  

The day started, like all our weekend days, at the Philly's (not very) famous Quaker City flea market.

 

We were there kind of early, which explains the sparse crowd above.  

Somebody was selling...

Part of a confessional.  My husband took the opportunity to ask for forgiveness for his sins.  His most egregious sin is leaving his crumpled up paper napkins on my kitchen table after he eats.  That drives me insane.  And when he cooks, anything he's used that came in a can, he leaves the empty cans in the sink.  If that's not an actionable offense, I don't know what is.

We came upon this

And he said something hilarious about the picture on the left, and I thought, 'Ooh, I gotta put that on my blog.'  But now I forget what he said.

There was only one find, but it's a super-neato cool one, to wit:

TWENTY-ONE Dark Shadows novels.  And one plain vanilla gothic novel by the author of the rest, Marilyn Ross.  

Back in the day, they would put out paperback novels based on the characters from popular shows.  To this day, I remember the opening line from what I think was a Columbo novel:  

                         "The girl was very young, very beautiful, and very dead."

Going to the car to go to NJ.

For a small flea market, Quaker City gets gajillions of people.  They've opened another parking lot to handle the crowds.

We missed church that day, but I read my Bible in the car on the way down.  It was early when were getting close to our destination, but as we were near Woodbine, NJ there was a roadside antiques store that was open, so we went in, to find

History's most cockamamie lamp.  If it had been metal rather than chalk, I'd have bought it.  We bought some other stuff, an slightly less wild lamp, a piece of adorable retro jewelry, and two lady and gent wall plaques made from black coral.  I'd give you the name of the shop,but I forget the name.

The back of the shop opens to this big field, which looked to me like some agriculture was going on.  My husband said, 'Yeah, way in the back there, it's an orchard.'  But I wanted to know what this green stuff in front of it was:

 He said, 'Oh, they're just weeds.  

If they're really weeds, they're the world's most organized, disciplined ones.

There was another shop down the road, Teaberry Something or Other, but although the sign screams '60 DEALERS!!!' as least 59 of those dealers are selling new, Made in China garbage.

It wasn't too long before we arrived at our destination.

Wanna see my case?

My case is not the only one carrying awesome, must-have stuff (it's just the best one), there's lots of other cool things to buy (not as awesome and must-have as my stuff, but desirable nevertheless.)

But here's the kind of thing that can give your antique co-op a bad name.

A piece of phony baloney 'Roseville' (yeah, right) made in China.  This is one of the WORST examples I've ever seen.  In REAL Roseville, the colors are part of the glaze, which goes into the glazing oven, or whatever they call it.  The example above was cold-painted, i.e. painted by some grunt with an air-brush. 

If I were running an antiques co-op, fakes and repros would not be permitted.  Actually, I'd be VERY tough on what gets in and what doesn't.  

What doesn't would be new anything, ESPECIALLY new Made in China anything, no new craft items, no new clothes, nothing gross or tasteless.  Everything would have to be legitimately old, and not offensive to my sensibilities.  Thank you.

After we left, we went into Cape May proper, to get a look at the house we're planning to buy.

ha ha.  That's the Inn of Cape May.  It would be a little big for just the two of us.

We ate at... well, it was very OK, but not so awesome that I'm going to give the restaurant's name.  Because I care.

Where you DON'T want to go in Cape May is a certain white tablecloth Italian restaurant in the Washington Street mall (it's an open air strolling dealie, not a real mall) which may or may not be named Cucina Rosa.  I had a seafood stew at this restaurant, and the shrimp were not deveined.  I've worked in tons of restaurants, and a lapse like that would have have heads rolling in the kitchen, and at the very least the chef coming to the table to beg for mercy.  The treatment I got?  Not only was there no apology, but even though I send the entree back, and didn't want a replacement, they still added it to the bill. 

The Fish Market, also on the mall, is a decent place to go, plus it's the only restaurant in Cape May that features a man wearing

a lobster costume.

Here's what I consider the number one attraction of the mall:

This is in the window of a toy store or a kids clothing store.  The little puppets bounce up and down in an adorable little dance.  I could look at it all day.  It's THAT cute.

My husband doesn't see the appeal.  Here's the seashore thing he could look at all day:

This is on the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ.  Smoke comes out of the ship and the pirate's gun, and the parrot's head moves.  I could park my hubs in front of this, wander the rest of the boardwalk, return to him two hours later, and he'd still be staring at it with awe on his face.

Here's some more stuff:

The above is Cape Island Baptist Church.  This is where we go then we're down there.  You should go.  Pastor Berger gives a very fine sermon, and they have a good choir. 

Some pretty nature: