Fells Point Post Week #2: The Antique Man Cometh

Please to be enjoying this second post in our arbitrary week of posts about Fells Point!

If you’ve ever walked along Fleet Street during the daylight hours, chances are pretty high that you’ve walked past The Antique Man (1806-12 Fleet St., Fells Point), but were possibly too busy, creeped out by the circusy appearance, or just too stupid to check it out. But for over 30 years now (at least, I’m pretty sure it’s been 30 years) and countless local awards later, The Antique Man has been slinging baubles, high end furniture, movie installations and picked through weirdness alike, all crammed into one of two storefronts — a converted garage, essentially — and it’s one of the most interesting places to shop or just gawk in the entire city.

Quite literally every square inch of the store is covered in tiny trinkets, larger displays of the Curiosities variety (a two headed mummy, a baby vampire skeleton being overseen by a Dracula of sorts) and dripping with Baltimore relics, some of which are actually affordable on a person like myself’s’s salary (approximately $6 a week). There are so many Mr. Boh paintings (see below for one), posters, lamps, glasses, in addition to classic Orioles memorabilia that for the sake of nostalgia alone it’s worth the admission (free). Photographing every item of interest would choke your hard drive, so here are four shitty camera phone shots to give you a sense:

While a lot of the higher end stuff might be out of your price range, consider bringing about $50 to The Antique Man, get some small stuff to take home and consider your Christmas shopping done with. I’m just saying I got these brilliant heavy, thick, hefty, manly, regal National Bohemian goblets at the $12 table, with a $10 and a $7 table of kitschy crap and other great stuff flanking them. If nothing else, take about an hour out of your Sunday afternoon and treat The Antique Man like a Museum of the Weird, buy something at one of these tables and consider it your admission ticket in which you get a groovy souvenir. You’ll be glad you did.