Downtown Santa Barbara’s Old Town Antiques Holds Final Moving Sale

Rising Rent Ends a Three-Decade Hold on Good Deals

Aldean has been part of the Old Town Antiques collective for about a decade. | Credit: Courtesy

“Everything needs to go!” the ad at Craigslist reads for Old Town Antiques, the hodgepodge of reasonably priced pre-owned stuff that has hung out on West Anapamu Street for five years now, moving its store and name from Old Town Goleta to Magnolia Shopping Center, only to expire on a street corner in downtown Santa Barbara.

Larry Zajic, who has run the business for 30 years with fellow antiques dealer Paul Lewis, wrote on Nextdoor that their rent had risen $1,000 per month: “Everyone is sad. Except the landlord.”

Some of the treasures at Old Town Antiquest on Monday | Credit: Courtesy

“I loved everyone who came into the shop,” Zajic said, dismayed at having to close the doors. Not only had the rent gone up, but his landlord was also adding triple net and passing on the cost of taxes, maintenance, and utilities. “You should see it in here on the weekend,” he said of the closing sale. “It’s like Christmas time on Brinkerhoff,” at one time a block full of antimacassars and would-be Chippendale.

Old Town Antiques has been a collective of antique dealers at its various addresses. About 11 people have kept the collective going on Anapamu Street over the years, Zajic said.

On Monday, Marilyn Wilkie was in the store, where her corner occupies one of the big front windows. She’s been with the collective for 18 years and said she regards it more like recycling. The trend most recently has been clothes, clothes, clothes, she said, which people now are interested in keeping out of the landfill.

Everyone young and old stopped in at the store, which is one block off State Street, from regulars who lived downtown to visitors shopping from out of town, said Willkie. Young people came, interested in old tech — film cameras and typewriters — and a lot of people stopped by to look at end tables and lamps, which they price at less than $100.

Aldean — “You don’t need my last name. I’m the only Aldean in town,” she said — was holding down the front counter, fielding questions and holding friendly conversations with whoever walked in the door.

“Do you remember The Bluebird?” she asked, gesturing to a painted wooden bird over the door. “This used to be The Bluebird,” Aldean said, a honky tonk and blues parlor started by Peter Feldmann in the 1970s, where everyone from Mance Lipscomb to The Cache Valley Drifters played.

Her section was in the back of the store, which was brightly lit by the lamps she’d hung and others on shelving they shared with a jar full of Scrabble tiles, “A Jar of Scrabble,” a label said.

Zajic said many in his collective had storefronts at other locations. He himself was headed for Antique Alley on State Street; his partner Paul Lewis was opening a shop in the Funk Zone. For now, the discount at 33 West Anapamu Street ranges from 15 to 50 percent until the end of the month.