Mindfield's Flea Market Adventure

Mindfield · August 8, 2004

I was awakened this morning to the fiancee suggesting we go to the 747 flea market in Bramalea. We've been meaning to go for ages but never got around to doing so. I decide, sure, why the hell not. So we get up and head out there.

For those who have never been, the 747 is a rather huge flea market consisting of 4 separate, adjacent buildings containing 350 vendors (approximately 300 of which sell clothing). Primarily we were interested in scoping out the video game vendors, though I didn't hold much hope that they'd have much or that it would be reasonably priced. Still, it'd be an outing and, at the very least, interesting.

Well, interesting was certainly a word for it. We walked into the first building, immediately surrounded with thronging crowds, 4 adjoining yet independent clothing vendors that all featured about 60 different forms of lamais garments, a crap electronics shop and a toy booth. Wading our way through the crowd, we realized we were hungry, so our first mission was to find food.

At every aisle intersection was a sign hung from the rafters proclaiming "FOOD COURT --->" and pointing in the general direction of a clothing vendor. We followed the signs as best we could until we arrived at last at the food court. By "court" I mean "harlem back alley," and by "food" I mean "has never seen a CFIA inspector." It was little more than a narrow hallway with seven stands: Roti and Doubles filled with your choice of what I can only assume was dead; West Indian curry and jerk that looked cooked well enough for the most devout of charcophiles; Pizza that looked very crunchy; Chinese; hot dogs; snacks and sandwiches; and Greek. The smell of old, overcooked oil hung in the air thicker than the crowds. The ten or so 8-foot benches lined up appeared to be solely under the janitorial care of those who used them. The linoleum floor was chipped and warping, a sign of advancing age, and it would probably look at you funny if you tried to explain to it what a mop was.

Hunger, having nothing else to work with, was ravenously consuming perfectly good sense, and since we hadn't yet realized that there were other foot courts in the other buildings, we decided to eat. The decision of what to eat pretty much came down to picking the booths and which items of food they offered that was the least offensive. Not being in the mood for hot dogs, we narrowed it down to a choice between Greek and Chinese. Chinese is difficult to screw up, and Greek, as made by a real Grecian (a shiny-headed bald one in this case) is usually acceptable. In the end, we had to rule out Greek, because his kitchen equipment consisted of a stove -- an actual, garden variety range he probably brought from home -- and a sink, and his food was premade, kept warm in a foil baking tray inside the stove's oven. It was too Betty-Crocker-on-Skid-Row for our taste, so Chinese it was.

Well. That was a mistake. It was a flea market outlet for a chain called Golden Star -- there's one in the mall I live behind, and it's a pretty average fast food chinese joint. Not great, but not terrible. This being an outgrowth of that chain, I figured it probably wouldn't be all that bad, and it was cheaper than the one in the mall, so what the hell. Unfortunately, I realized, as we sat down at a bench, my butt resting simultaneously on the seat and against a garbage can that kept poking me in the back, that it was not only possible to screw up chinese food, but that it was possible to be very skilled at doing it, too. The egg rolls were cooked enough that the wrapper could be classified as a cracker, the rice was utterly bland even with extra soy, and the teriyaki chicken tasted nothing like teriyaki and was only chicken in the academic sense -- at least, it was reasonable to assume that whatever it was, it did come from something that resembled a chicken. The only thing that was even remotely pallatable was the noodles. Everything smelled like oil.

After eating roughly half of what I actually ordered, we both departed by way of the exit at the end of the food court, thankful for the opportunity to get the stink of the place out of our nostrils and replace it with the doubless healthier constituents found in a cigarette.

We went into the second building. My first impression was, "didn't we just do this?" This was because we were greeted at the entrance by 4 adjoining yet independent clothing vendors that all featured about 60 different forms of lamais garments, a crap electronics shop and a toy booth. As we made a more proper walk through of the second building (having skipped most of the first building for fear of recurring flashbacks about lunch) it seemed like everything was the same, even the signs about the food court pointing to clothing vendors, except the food court in this one was, though smaller, much nicer -- which is to say less offensive and smelling less like stale cooking oil and more like vindaloo. There was even a nicer pizza place -- though that was likely a product of it being larger and cleaner, not of the pizza looking any less crunchy. This one had a video game vendor, too -- a booth of about six feet wide that carried used, mostly current console stuff, with one box of NES carts starting at $10 each. Useless.

Next! We skipped over the third building and on to the fourth on account of a big sign outside proclaiming another video game vendor. That one turned out to be much larger but equally as amusing. Again, mostly current stuff, but they had a small selection of older stuff; Game Gear carts at $5 or $10, NES carts at $6, a few NeoGeo Pocket carts, and three lonely common 2600 carts in bad shape. I didn't even ask the price. I already had them in better condition. This fourth building had a collectable shop in an upstairs loft, much like Hallmark or San Francisco, with lots of plush toys, pewter and rosin figurines and picture frames, costume jewelry, etc. It was fairly large for what it was, and it was actually well appointed -- probably the cleanest and most retail-like store in the entire complex, though too crowded with stuff hanging from the ceiling in locations apparently designed to smack you upside the head as you browsed.

We left, took a quick, circuitous route through the third building that we passed earlier, and then decided to go home. It was rather disappointing. Four buildings, each near identical replicas of each other with only a few vendors in each that actually sold something other than clothes, cheap watches, crap electronics, or hideous costume jewelry that would make even prostitutes vomit. For the most part, it was a giant bazaar for people whose left brains hadn't yet developed a level of reasoning that allowed for the painfully obvious realizations that the watches will last a week, the DVD player is $50 for a reason, the jewelry was designed by a fashion terrorist, the clothes are cheap because they're water soluable, and the food is cheap because it isn't.

But at least we got out of the house.