The Least Awesome Flea Market in the World

If you follow me on Twitter @SaturdayMorning (and you really should), you may have seen that last weekend I was pretty excited about a trip I was taking with my Mom. A few months ago we were on our way south and passed this building on the interstate, and I knew that someday I would go. I had visions of mile-long tables filled with 80s action figures, retro video games, and miscellaneous junk. The Most Awesome Flea Market in the World? How could this not be good?

As it turns out, the meaning of awesome varies a great deal depending on if you are a redneck or not.

I’ve been to my fair share of flea markets, and I wasn’t expecting it to be Disney World. What we found in the huge, musky-smelling building was more like a bizzarre post-apocalyptic mall than anything else. People with five or less teeth roamed the aisles of cheap, knockoff wholesale goods telling their children what great deals they were getting. Only $5 for the rebel-flag sheet set! Daggum!

It wasn’t just the people and merchandise that looked shady either. This flea market was complete with it’s own BBQ restaurant, Smoker’s Lounge, and get this…barbershop. I really wish I would have taken a photo of the barbershop.

One booth was sporting these classy wolf-lamps in addition to their racist/homophobic t-shirts and collection of knives.

It wasn’t all bad though. There was a particularly cool booth of action figures, but they were pretty overpriced and I didn’t pick any up. The same can be said about one booth of video games.

As we left the building, we saw that the front parking lot was full of booths too, so we thought we’d give it a shot. Unfortunately, this part was where people backed their trucks up to their booth, laid their pile of junk on the grass, and blankly stared at you while you passed by. Oddly enough, this was the section where I made my one and only purchase.

I had about three of these TMNT collectors cases when I was growing up, and I’ve been meaning to find one again to sit on my shelf and collect dust. Some poor fella in the outdoor lot had it sitting on his table, and I bought it from him despite his attempt at the lamest money-grab of all time. It had a $4 price tag on it, and when I picked it up he said (in a hillbilly voice) “Oh that’s not my price tag, it’s really $5.”

I didn’t even want to talk to this guy, and we both wanted to get the heck out of dodge and spend the rest of our day doing more classy things, so I just gave him a five and we left.

I’m still trying to figure out the moral of this story, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with avoiding flea markets that self-proclaim their awesomeness.