Alameda Point Antiques Faire

At six o’clock on the first Sunday of every month, the gates open onto the old aircraft runways of Naval Air Station Alameda, on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. The first buyers walk out among more than 800 dealer booths, with the city skyline and the Bay Bridge across the water. The pavement holds furniture, pottery, jewelry, art, books, clothing, and household goods, and every piece must be 20 years old or older. Antiques By The Bay, Inc. runs the show, which it calls the largest in Northern California, until 3 p.m.

The price of admission drops as the day goes on. The VIP hour and a half from 6 a.m. costs $20. Early buyers from 7:30 to 9 pay $15, the morning crowd pays $10, and anyone arriving after 1 p.m. pays $5. The on-site box office takes cash only. The Oaklandside, writing in 2026 in the faire’s 28th year, called the whole event largely cash-only, food stands included. That paper counted about 10,000 people on a regular first Sunday. Teenagers get up early to thrift for clothes. Couples leave with wagons full of plants, mirrors, and knick-knacks. Others browse stands of vintage dolls, records, and baseball cards. It can be windy on the runway, or sunny, or both.

Parking is free, though the paper warned that anyone arriving after 8:30 should expect to walk a bit. Traffic can back up in the Webster Tube and at the Main Street entrance. Ferries from San Francisco and Marin County land half a mile from the parking lot entrance. On the grounds there is a free shuttle, flat carts lent for large pieces, shopping carts for rent, and secure bicycle parking. The site lies within a Wildlife Sanctuary, and the faire’s use permit bars pets, though service dogs are allowed. Cameras are often rolling, and entering the faire counts as consent to appear on film. The show goes on in light rain. If management calls it off, a make-up show follows on the second Sunday of the same month. If that day is rained out too, the dealers wait for the next first Sunday.

Coffee at one end, lavender at the other

The food trucks line the north and south edges of the field, with seating behind the trucks on one side. The faire opened with about 15 food vendors. By 2026 it had more than three dozen. “We’ve always had food trucks, just not this many,” said Randie Bradley, show manager for Antiques by The Bay. “We gradually increased and added a whole [other side].”

Shoppers who rose at five find coffee at both ends of the grounds. Higher Land Specialty Coffee, on the north side, roasts its beans at the CoRo coffee collective in Berkeley and draws a line. Colibri cafe, at the opposite end, makes its own lavender syrup for a lavender latte.

By midday the choices widen. Michoz, a Peruvian stand, serves pollo a la brasa for $10.50: two pieces of chicken with potato wedges, pickled onions, cilantro, and a bright yellow ají amarillo sauce. Fely’s Cuisine grills its meat on site and fries housemade lumpia to order, ten pieces for $9.88, and it has a line at lunchtime. Street Stix sells a $25 Street Food Cup of fish balls, lobster balls, corn, and barbecue skewers, stuck with small Philippine flags. Lockeford Sausage comes in from San Joaquin County with two options, mild or spicy, at $10 each, with unlimited sauerkraut. Yo Soy Ceviche heaps its $20 house ceviche with corn nuts and a piece of corn on the cob. Kebabs 2 Go plates tandoori chicken skewers with naan. Get Dipped coats frozen bananas in chocolate for $8.

Some trucks belong to established shops: Berkeley’s Gregoire and Lucia’s, and Alameda’s Donut Petit, Cafe Jolie, Calafia Taqueria, and Dragon Rouge, which goes by District 11 at the faire. Other stalls are the kind found at farmers markets, selling tamales, kettle corn, acai bowls, and honey. Feelgood Bakery started as one of the original stands and went on to open brick-and-mortar bakeries before it closed, The Oaklandside reported in 2026.

Made land and a one-dollar airport

The ground under the booths is largely made land. In 1931 the City of Alameda gave some 1,100 acres to the Army, which built Benton Field. Four years later the Navy approached the City about the 935-acre Alameda Airport. The City sold it for $1, after Congress authorized Franklin Delano Roosevelt to accept that sum. Later that year the Navy took over Benton Field as well. Dredging began in 1938, and the new land grew gradually westward to hold runways and hangars along Monarch Way.

In 1993 the federal government announced that the Navy would close the air station. The Mercury News gives 1997 as the year the base closed. A Navy assessment in 1996 found that no single building qualified for the National Register of Historic Places, but that the station as a district did. In 1999 the Alameda City Council made the district a Local Monument. The Navy sent its National Register nomination to the National Park Service on December 4, 2012, and the grounds now lie within the Alameda Naval Air Station Historic District, National Register #12001191.

A flashlight in the backs of trucks

The sources differ on when the faire began and who began it. In 2012 the Mercury News said it was established in 1997, the year the base closed, by Allen Michaan, president and founder of Michaan’s Auctions. A correction published that August in the Alameda Journal named Allen and Sandra Michaan together as founders, still in 1997. The San Francisco Chronicle in 2003 and The Oaklandside in 2026 both date the first faire to 1998. The promoters’ own website, as archived in 2007, said the show opened in 1998 with 250 booths and about 3,300 shoppers, and named four co-producers: Betsy and Jerry Goldman and Allen and Sandra Michaan.

Michaan came to the work from movie houses. He built his first theater, the Rialto in Berkeley, at 19, and he has kept Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre since 1980. He said a flea market in Pasadena gave him the idea for the faire. In Alameda, according to the Chronicle, the permit hearings were among the most contentious of his career. Residents pictured a junk-filled flea market and fought it, even after Michaan promised to patrol the aisles himself to enforce an antiques-only rule. Beverly Johnson sat on the Planning Commission then and later became mayor. She remembered tense meetings, then said of Michaan, “I think he’s done a lot of good for the community.”

The first faire tested the promise. Michaan found trucks loaded with socks, Pokemon paraphernalia, and Beanie Babies. He and Jerry Goldman asked those sellers to leave and offered full refunds, and some of them flew into a rage. “In the beginning I got in screaming matches with people, because they didn’t want to do it,” Michaan said. “For a while, my nickname was Saddam Michaan.”

By 2003 the Chronicle found him on the runway at 3:30 on a Sunday morning with a flashlight, shining it into the backs of trucks in search of tube socks. On the Nov. 2 faire that year, two hours of looking turned up only a small stack of comics tied to the 1997 film “The Lost World.” The booth’s owners pulled them at his request with a sheepish “Oh, OK.” In the same walk Michaan bought an antique dresser and a cloisonné floral vase for his auction house. “It’s always a treasure hunt,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re going to turn up.” Some dealers came from as far as Maryland. George Tart had driven down from Seattle every month for five years with a truck of antique clothing and velvet paintings. “This is the best (antiques fair) on the West Coast,” he said. “I hate selling at flea markets, but this one is different. They should have a special name for it.”

Cordial glasses, three dollars the set

The show then went by the name Alameda Point Antiques and Collectibles Faire. By 2002, the promoters wrote, it had reached 800 booths and a peak attendance of 10,000. Sunset Magazine and HGTV’s “Flea Market Finds” had featured it, and buyers came from as far as Japan. By the start of 2008 it had moved to the main runway. In 2012 the Mercury News estimated attendance at 12,000 a month, with more than 900 booths. That year admission ran $15 at dawn, and the last hour, from 2 to 3 p.m., was free. Michaan had by then opened an auction annex in Building 20, a former helicopter maintenance hangar, one free shuttle stop from the faire. He recalled the critics who had doubted that shoppers would come out to a former military base. “People come from all over the country,” he said.

That summer Debra Lynn Albright worked the booth for Lynn’s of Alameda, the Encinal Avenue shop her mother, Lynn Nelson, had opened 53 years before. Albright sold a set of four cordial glasses for $3 and seven antique spoons for $45, and she said old Christmas decorations and Victorian toys still sold well. “We always do well here,” she said. Fred Grandy of Benicia laid out large letters and numbers he made from reclaimed metal, at $39 apiece. Most buyers took several to spell out a name or a house number. “It’s one of the older shows, and people tend to stay local,” he said. Shirley Gibson of Halcyon, near San Luis Obispo, was passing through on her way north. She bought fake pink spray roses for $2 and old European linen dresses for $20 each, then eyed an “L,” a “V,” and a “5” from Grandy for their orange and blue paint. “There’s great variety, from junk to great,” she said. “It’s an education, kind of like a museum.”