A 99-cent breakfast and $14 sneakers
If you’re like me and frequently return compliments on an outfit with, “Thanks, I got it for $3,” or if you refuse to buy anything without a past, or if you’ve always wanted a shopping cart with a plaid plastic lining, the monthly Rose Bowl flea market is your Xanadu.
But before heading out to Pasadena on the second Sunday of the month, the right fortifications are in order to prepare yourself for several hours of browsing in the sun.
My boyfriend, Wally, and I recently heard through our network of fellow starving-artist foodies of a mythical place where breakfast was to be had for two people for $1.98.
Where was this promised land of plentiful poor-people food? Folks, you heard it here first, the mecca of discount furniture, the IKEA of Burbank, is also home to a 99-cent breakfast.
On Sunday morning, we drag our sleep-deprived and slightly hung-over selves out of bed around 9:30 to make it there before 11, when the IKEA menu transitions from eggs to Swedish meatballs. We load up our trays in the cafeteria-style line with eggs, bacon, potatoes and coffee for 99 cents per person and even splurge on the lingonberry crepes for another whopping 99 cents each.
After breakfast, we take the obligatory IKEA tour, to muse on how we would furnish were we ever actually able to afford it.
But our mood is less melamine and more bohemian. We decide to look for funky artwork at the Rose Bowl, so I launch a preemptive strike against my lackadaisical framing track record and pick up a sleek metal frame for $8.99.
We are languid flea-marketers and don’t arrive at the Rose Bowl until high noon, but as a reward for our laziness, the price drops to only $7 per person after 9 a.m. And though the selection isn’t as great later in the day, the haggling is leagues better.
The weather is perfect -- barely 70, sunny and breezy. We poke around the outer booths, looking for unusual artwork, until we find a colorful music poster for $5 that is just the right size for our frame.
At the entrance to the furniture section, I spy a solid wood, vintage sleigh bed, with the unbelievable price of $50 affixed. But alas, we drove Wally’s coupe instead of my sedan, and our budget for this outing is $50. So we pass. A good bargain shopper knows when to walk away.
We stroll through the clothing section, and right as we’re leaving, Wally’s sneaker fetish is aroused by a pair of red Asics with gold stripes, with the unbelievable asking price of $15. Wally gives them $14 for sneakers that retail for around $60, and we call it a day.
One warning: If you don’t want your shoulders to end up the color of crimson sneakers, lather on the sunscreen.
Lisa Hirsch can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.
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The tab
Breakfast $4.29
Picture frame $9.73
Where: IKEA, 600 N. San Fernando Blvd., Burbank. Breakfast served until 11 a.m.
Flea market tickets $14.00
Purchases $19.00
Where: Rose Bowl, Pasadena. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., second Sunday of every month. $7; children 12 and younger free. Earlier admission available at increased rate. See www.rgcshows.com. (Purchases were a rock poster print for $5 and a pair of Asics sneakers for $14.)
Total $47.02
