So much stuff

Big Mango Trading Company

Glass disc at Big Mango

Antiquing I did go with my friend Linda last Thursday, down along Riverfront-formerly-Industrial Boulevard.  Our first stop was the Big Mango Trading Company, and what a discovery!  This is the sort of place that makes me long to be rich, so I could have the dilemma of trying to decide which of the columns of satiny, striated petrified wood or how much of the lusciously colored chunks of glass slag I'd like for my garden.  Or perhaps some exotic Indonesian architectural objet for the foyer. We wandered through oohing and aahing, and I couldn't resist stroking all the sensual surfaces of wood and glass and stone along the way.  And, oh yes, there is a shop cat, a pert little tabby with an assertive personality.

Antique high tech

Who were these children?

After that we headed over to one of the several antique malls clustered in the area.  (You can pick up the handy map shown below at any of them.)  I'm sure you've been to similar antique malls, so no need to go into descriptive mode.  Basically, there's so much stuff.  Stuff that's interesting, stuff that's beautiful, stuff that's hideous, stuff you might like to have, stuff that someone once wanted and acquired and now waits for another person to do the same. The fact is that I already have a lot of stuff, so really, I just go to look at these vestiges of times past, like touring quirky museums with price tags on the exhibits.

For lunch w treated ourselves to a most delicious meal at the newly opened Bridge Bistro.  Occupying the corner of a renovated, mid-century modern-looking building, it's all windows and white walls, tables draped in black with sprigs of rosemary in the bud vases, very spare but not stark and quite pleasant.  However, don't go expecting views of the soon-to-open, Calatrava-designed bridge over the Trinity; the restaurant is directly on Riverfront.  


Riverfront, which, of course, leads one to expect some trace, some glimpse, of the Trinity.  Alas,  the river is back behind its levees, and the "boulevard" remains firmly industrial in character, a hodgepodge of warehouses and odd, assorted businesses. (My view from the bistro was a lot filled with boats, mostly small cabin cruisers, although the sign said it was the Big Rig Reconditioning Center.) Yet it does have real character, gritty but interesting, probably rather jarring to the eyes of those who come from the suburbs to the north with all their neatly landscaped and sanitized shopping areas.    

After the meal we managed two more antique malls before succumbing to that fatigue which is more an overload of the senses – the constant visual and mental processing of shopping – than it is physical.  We stopped at Zaguán Latin Cafe for a coffee and pastry to regain our strength, then finally called it a day.