My Brocante Days

As many of you know, I used to be a antique dealer.  I turned professional

some 30 years ago ...first by selling almost weekly at various flea markets in the Los Angeles area and

then getting a space at a well known brick and mortar store in Santa Monica, where I stayed for thirteen years...

Well the store closed down...not for lack of business, but because the building was sold to make way for condos...I panicked at the time, wondering what I would do next.   The idea of selling at flea markets again surely did not appeal to me...loading up the car, getting up at ungodly hours in the morning, sitting in the hot sun all day and then at the end of the day packing all that stuff up again...I just couldn't face it anymore.  I looked at various other places to sell and none were very good...I was in one of the best places in the city and nothing would compare to it ....so I decided to retire from the business all together...The store did re-locate, this time in Venice, but my heart was telling me to back off...it was time to retire and move on to something else.

Wertz brothers antique market  santa monica, california

I had spent 30 some years looking, digging, driving, packing, shipping, cleaning and repairing thousands and thousands of things...I was very successful at it and enjoyed it...but the idea of still doing it had lost its glow...It was also getting harder to find things at good prices...prices so good that it warranted shipping the stuff long distances, many times from England and France, at a great cost and lots of wrapping and bubble wrapping to insure its safe arrival here.

I was burnt out...


I had not had a real vacation since I started the business...everywhere I went involved shopping and packing and shipping...the airport was always a nightmare...I remember in the pre 9/11 days of showing up at the airport with 20 boxes of stuff and slipping the skycab some cash for him to break a few rules and get my boxes on that plane....or arriving at Heathrow airport in London, only to be asked by Custom officals to unpack all my suitcases, which I carefully packed so nothing would break ( those were the days that I would bring two empty trunks and fill them up) and then there I was ...sweating bullets, late for the plane, with bubble wrap and literally hundreds of items laying all over the floor...and then I had to pack them up ...again...hellish!

it felt like all I did was shop...

 I still have lots of stuff left....beautiful things...

 Mr. Beatnheart and I have a plan of leaving LA

(although I must confess, I have had that plan for about 40 years now!)  but I know what happens too, after witnessing it many many times, what happens when people get older...You can no longer maintain the big houses, the storage spaces, the garages bursting at the seams...filled with stuff and boxes of things you don't even know what is in them anymore.  I have gone to a thousand estate sales...and those old houses filled to the rafters with things the old folks kept as the houses fell to disrepair...well I want to be pro-active and begin cleaning out my house and my boxes and pass my treasures on to new homes...

give this beautiful weiner dog a home

So I am listing many of my treasures, the things that I have kept in my personal collection,

 in my beatnheartvintage shop on etsy...

I have hung on to many of these things for years because I loved them and

they meant something to me....but now I am ready to let them go...and I 

want to make room in my life for the new things that have meaning...

So stop by the shop...I will be listing almost everyday ( well that is the "Big Plan")

Wish me luck because I'm going to need it...

beatnheartvintage