How Bazaar

One activity I enjoy is visiting bazaars - spaces in which many stall-holders gather and sell second hand items of any kind one can imagine. It started over a decade ago with me discovering the Chapel Street Bazaar. I would go looking for particular items to buy - select old Transformers mostly. Rarely would I find exactly what I wanted. But it hardly mattered because most of the fun came from simply seeing all this dodgy old stuff.

Somewhat more recently I was introduced to the larger Waverley Bazaar closer to home. This warehouse setting for browsing old tat then moved to even larger premises in Clayton past the newly constructed M-City (which incidentally is a right-sized shopping centre featuring just one supermarket, one department store, and a cinema). Here one can stroll for an hour slowly taking in all the consumer novelty of several decades past. Few things are truly antique but there is plenty of retro stuff to satisfy. I go for the toys but stay for other things. Here I will share a handful of the many photos I've taken to give a sense of the nostalgia.



There are plenty of old vinyl records but this one has been turned into - what - a bowl of some kind? Possibly an ash tray? Who can say for sure. Somebody adapted it into a minor work of craft and you could utilize it any way you wish.



I saw this nude statue at Chapel Street and then later at Waverley. I have to allow for the possibility than even something this large and particular was mass produced. They could have been two separate copies. And yet I fancy that she was following me around. I suspect that some items pass hands from stall-holder to stall-holder and just move about. What a jolly good sport.



I suppose a plastic plaything had to be part of my survey. I never had nor played Mousetrap but always enjoyed the ads and indeed any such gizmos. It has been fun reliving both my own childhood and the childhoods of others in coming across games like this colourful contraption.



Here we have a sliver of the history of how history is depicted. Some may find it holds a dated message but it works well as a presentation of information. We see how the Spanish and Portuguese aspired to divide the world between them in the 1500s. And our spherical planet is rendered here on paper in such a way that the colonizing powers expand from the approximate centre of that process. Plenty of maps have been called 'Eurocentric' but this one literally is.



I cannot even tell you what this is. Definitely a machine. Most likely a computer (I think it says so in writing). Something computerized then. But what does it do? I want to say it worked in a factory or garage but the truth is I merely like the way it looks. Others can tell me what its function was. I wonder if anyone will ever buy it.



Sometimes it is difficult to tell what an item is. This massive strangling snake could just be a model but I suspect it is a cumbersome piece of taxidermy. One becomes accustomed to seeing markedly different things at a bazaar but sometimes I am still utterly surprised. And in this case a tad spooked. The way it just lolls about among household items and clothes racks is incongruous.

* * * * *

A bazaar often acts as a museum while it is always a store. The many stall-holders stock the shelves but everything is managed and transacted via one front desk. At the Waverley Bazaar they even have the space for a basic cafe and I usually make a purchase there - I think of it as a voluntary entry fee. After all, I want them to stay open. And now and then I'll buy a gift or bring a friend to share in the experience. Even if it has become a part of my everyday life it still feels just a bit bizarre.