Lunch Box Museum and
Antiques Store News
Nice, California
Update
Miscellaneous Lunchboxes
Our lunch box museum is coming along nicely. We now have the wall and ceiling shelves up, thirty-eight boxes each. There will be a marqui area in the front, holding another grouping. We have over 500 lunch boxes, mostly metal but several are vinyl or plastic. They come in a variety of shapes: domes, tobacco tin, and traditional box styles. We will be selling our doubles but the others will be on display.
The museum will also feature a replica of Laughing Sally, renamed Dixie HaHa the infamous Playland giggling goddess. We put hydraulics on her back and connected a coin op machine, to make her laugh for you nonstop. A friend of ours gave us a tape of her famous laugh which plays on a tape player inside her base. Each time a quarter goes in the coin op machine, she moves up and down laughing hysterically. She was originally designed by recycle artist Poe Desmuke. We restored, redressed and mechanized her for your pleasure. Dixie is a buxom beauty over 7 feet tall with a 68 inch waist. Miss Ha Ha is surrounded by mechanical animals and people, each doing something unusual. Some of them were in the windows of the San Francisco funhouse. The motors are all restored and working great. You must see this to believe.
The store is designed to bring a smile to your face which everyone needs now a days. It will feature show cases filled with outside dealer wares, shelves of lunch boxes for sale, over 300 vintage doll items, bobby soxer ponytail vinyl items, carnival collectables, front strike match books, Marx pinball machine games or toys, vintage or odd books, and anything whimsical that we come across. The outside yard will have used metal fixtures, decorative chic items, ornate fencing, brass or iron beds, and wrought iron for your garden or home. Our grand opening is scheduled sometime around the summer of 2006. We will keep you posted. Email us if you have lunch boxes for sale.
The Future Lunchbox Museum
My husband and I are busy remodeling an old firehouse in Nice, California. It will be an antique and collectables store with a lunch box museum, carnival motif displays, as well as a Laughing Sally replica and moving fun house displays. Every weekend, we add a few more things to our building. We have already painted the entire exterior, replaced the sliding doors like it had before, put in a kitchen with Coca Cola red metal cabinets, and finished the installation of a wrought iron storefront fence. We put a shower in that came from the old Upper Lake hotel. It is painted the same red with white. Of course!!! The newly installed wood stove makes it nice and cozy. Our next big project is the false front that will resemble an old theatre lobby.
The colorful
ceiling is done. It is insulated with recycled material from the old building. We
installed an old movie lobby hanging light. We just finished the display case wall
made of old hotel glass sliders. Our goal is to use 80% recycled materials and we
are doing it. The funhouse motif is coming along well and Dixie Ha Ha a replica of
San Francisco Playland's Laughing Sally is dressed and the hydrolics are working to
make her go up and down when she laughs. The carnival figures move with her when a
quarter is put in her coin machine. The mechanical animals and people are located
along the wall of recycled old doors painted in whimsical colors to resemble a carnival
setting. We have put 250 lunch boxes up on their shelves along the ceiling and walls.
We have another 250 to display. We plan on opening the summer of 2006. Until then,
I have some fun pictures to kind of give you an idea of what it will be like with
things we have already finished for the museum.