Twenty years ago I learned about the high tech game of hide-and-seek: Geocaching. I wrote about it for my newspaper chain, and spent a little time the next several years searching for hidden containers of trinkets and crap in public parks and other places. During that era of my life I found a few hidden caches at point along the strip. It's a fun, family-friendly activity that I stopped making time for years ago.
And then I wound up babysitting my nieces during the past several months. Before long I was introducing them to geocaching.
Knowing there was a geocache in the parking lot of the Orleans, I ventured out shortly after the sun had risen to find a small, hidden metal tin using GPS coordinates, take a few pictures and ponder all the things I'll never experience in Vegas as a resident of Minnesota. I spent a few minutes in the parking lot that morning watching cars cruising Tropicana Avenue in both directions, regretting I didn't snap a picture of the colorful woman who was walking down the sidewalk, probably not for exercise, and considering how my life might have been different had I made different choices at points in my life. More on that another day.
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| My parking lot view of the hotel where I've spent the most nights during the past 10 years. |
After my short parking lot excursion, I took coffee up to the room, we relaxed for a while, snacked on breakfast bars we brought with us and decided our lunch would be at In-N-Out. My trips often end with lunch at In-N-Out before heading to the airport, and usually at the Maryland Parkway location near the Pinball Hall of Fame. This trip would have a morning departure, so our In-N-Out visit came early, and we opted for the location down the street since we wouldn't be dining in the restaurant. We used the drive-thru, which took about 20 minutes, then dined at the outdoor table outside the gift shop next door.
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| The long wait for a burger and fries. |
Then it was back to Orleans and a visit to the pool. We spent a long afternoon at the pool, which again wasn't very busy, although it seemed like a lot of the pool visitors came later that afternoon. Once again there were announcements telling us to wear our mask, and for whatever reason, one of the poolboys made a pass around the pool deck during the late afternoon telling everyone not wearing a mask while lounging to wear their mask. But it's not as if the mask police were pounding the pavement all afternoon.
We left the pool late in the afternoon and cleaned up before heading north. Our first destination: Broadacres Marketplace.
Broadacres Marketplace is a huge outdoor flea market. I'm a sucker for flea markets, although I often have a tough time parting with my cash when I visit one. My buddy, who is a master at scooping up old video game cartridges in bulk and selling off his purchase game by game for a nice profit, had been to Broadacres once upon a time, and vouched for it as being a good flea market.
It's a couple of miles north of downtown, and it's huge. Huge. HUGE. It's a couple of bucks to get in, and they have security doing metal detection when you enter, which didn't exactly comfort my girlfriend.
The flea market runs Friday evenings and weekends. There are many food vendors scattered about the market grounds, and there are tables and a stage area where they feature live music during less pandemic times. There also appears to be a small variety of simple amusement park rides on the grounds to help entertain the kids, but those were all shut down on this Friday night.
I wondered if some of the vendors have semi-permanent set ups at this flea market. Plenty didn't, without question. Despite opening at 4 p.m., we were there at 6 p.m. and some vendors were still setting up, including the one vendor I found that had an extensive collection of Halloween merchandise. Their entire space seemed dedicated to Halloween merch, but they weren't ready to begin selling when I walked by. I thought I'd come back later, but forgot about them before we left.
The layout of booths is organized, but it's hard to keep track of where to go, or where you've been. It's not a basic rectangle of shopping aisles. And as I noted, it's huge. Huge. HUGE.
As for the merchandise. I was both amazed and disappointed.
There were booths that had odd collections of random secondhand crap, which is what I like to see at a flea market. And there were plenty of dealers selling new merchandise, as I expected.
There were plenty of vendors selling household products you'd find at your local grocery store, such as laundry soap and toilet paper. I didn't price compare the bargains to be had. I don't recall seeing Tide laundry detergent, but there was plenty of less prestigious brands. I couldn't help but wonder, who comes to the flea market to buy their plastic sandwich bags or aluminum foil? Can it really be that much cheaper than the generic products at local stores around Vegas?
Need $5 leggings? I don't, but I saw at least a dozen vendors with big displays of leggings, some noting their product was $5. If you're looking for cheap leggings, I guess you eye them up and assume they'll fit to your liking. The vendors don't have fitting rooms, that I could tell, and I'm guessing they aren't in the business of making exchanges, a la your local Target store.
I saw a few vendors with lingerie prominently on display, as well. I also multiple vendors with socks and tighty-whities, but those weren't displayed as prominently, for some reason. Plenty of new women's and children's shoes to be had, and a few men's sneakers, I believe. I only recall one vendor selling new cowboy boots. But dang, that booth had a ton of them, and I think they were all $50 a pair. I can't imagine they were high quality, and I'm guessing boots in your size are hit and miss.
If you need bright yellow or orange clothing for wearing at a construction site, several vendors at the flea market had you covered.
Bulk candy and/or nuts, you could find that several times over. A lot of those products seemed to be things you'd more commonly find in a Mexican market.
Several vendors had toys, although it didn't appear many of the toys were name brand products. There were some, I believe, but I sensed that a lot of the toys were generic versions of known commodities, like Disney princess dolls. I saw a smattering of dealers selling Funko Pops, but I didn't bother looking at what they had or what they were asking for their inventory. I don't collect them, and I have no idea which ones are "valuable."
The oddest things I found were tires, mattresses and appliances.
I didn't see many vendors selling tires, maybe only one, but I had to wonder who buys a set of tires from a random vendor at a flea market?
Several vendors had mattresses. How does a person decide they're going to buy mattresses in bulk and resell them through a flea market? And how much can you make selling them?
And appliances! There were a few vendors with washers and dryers. So weird!
hI was disappointed that I didn't find many vendors selling collectibles or outdated media. I don't collect comic books any more. I haven't for decades. But I always enjoy checking out books for sale, and buy some cheap old books for reading and passing along, often via a Little Free Library.
Same with baseball cards or other sports collectibles. I get a kick out of looking at the stuff, but rarely see anything I'm even tempted to buy, unless I think I can easily turn around and sell it on eBay for a healthy product, and most vendors know what the going rate is for such merch.
I found one vendor with old video games, but I don't play them, I don't collect them and I have no idea what any of them are worth, so I wouldn't know a bargain if I saw it. I was surprised not to see many DVDs, CDs or other media for sale. Many of us don't want that stuff any more, but I'll buy a cheap CD if it interests me, although I don't have the patience to search through an unorganized collection looking for the diamond in the rough.
More than anything, I'd love to know the stories behind these vendors. Where do they source mattresses, leggings, bulk candy and generic toys? How much do they earn after a weekend at Broadacres? Why is the flea market business appealing to them?
I know we missed an aisle or two of vendors, but I didn't want to spend two hours looking at merchandise I wasn't going to buy. I had given up hope of finding vendors with merchandise that interested me, so after about an hour it was time to head for the car.
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| My picture at the start of our flea market adventure doesn't give you a good idea of how expansive Broadacres Marketplace is. And I didn't stop to take pics of all the odd merchandise I found at this flea market. |
I'd love to have a chance to go back some day, by myself, and scrutinize the merchandise for a couple of hours. My girlfriend politely tagged along, but she'd gladly stay at the hotel on a Saturday and allow me to scour the merch all morning.
From Broadacres we headed downtown for dinner at Chicago Brewing Company inside Four Queens.
Friday night downtown during a pandemic. You wouldn't know it. Like many have reported, plenty of people are rolling in on the weekends. Fremont Street was crowded, and although they're not doing temperature checks outside the casinos, they still have gates funneling you into and out of areas. Not sure why that makes sense when social distancing is preached everywhere we go.
Dinner at Chicago Brewing was good, but we had to tolerate three jackasses who were drunk, watching NBA basketball and yelling every time they got a little tingly in their pants. I've been emotionally invested in televised sports, but Chicago Brewing ain't a sports bar. The waiter working the room told the dudes, more than once, that they needed to dial it down, and the second time he did, one of the dudes got belligerent. Dudes should have been kicked out. They were done eating, and one of the dudes was practically passed out on the table for a while. And yet, when it appeared they were going to pay their tab and leave, the waiter ends up bringing three more beers. Made no sense to me.
After dinner we went to the Plaza to play. I finally sat down to play Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em, and had no luck. My girlfriend had no luck on the slots, either. After an hour or so we headed back to the Orleans, where I played cards again, with no luck. It wasn't a late night for me, and it wasn't an exciting night of gambling in Vegas, but it was a great day in Vegas nonetheless.
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