Oakland Coliseum Swap Meet

A red and yellow sign reading “Coliseum Swap Meet” stands over a parking lot at 5401 Coliseum Way, where drivers on I-880 can read it. Below it, in Oakland’s Coliseum Industrial neighborhood, vendors build their booths from the ground up each morning. They unload cars, raise canopies and lay out goods, then pack it all away by evening. The market is open all year. Its operator, West Wind Drive-In & Public Markets, calls it the Oakland Coliseum Swap Meet. Most of the people who shop and sell there call it La Pulga, Spanish for “the flea.”

Row D and the back fence

The aisles are marked out by parking spaces, tent poles, and tarps. El Tímpano, a bilingual Oakland newsroom, counted hundreds of booths there, run mostly by Spanish-speaking vendors. They sell household goods, produce, sweets, croc charms, flowers, hardware, clothes, jewelry, cosmetics, and electronics at a discount. A table of goods carried out of La Pulga for a 2024 exhibit held leather belts, artisanal Mexican ceramics, customized regional hats, Oaxacan chicatana ants, and used construction tools.

Hilario “Lalo” Martinez of Santa Rosa sells produce and snacks from Oaxaca. “People from Oaxaca go specifically there on the weekends, to buy produce and snacks from him that they’re familiar with,” said the photojournalist Hiram Alejandro Durán. Ramón Urdaneta, also of Santa Rosa, sells plants. “Plants sell by themselves,” he said. Faith Gold, 19, of San Leandro, specializes in angel readings. A visitor can also ride a mechanical bull or have a tarot reading.

When El Tímpano’s recorder batteries died during its reporting in 2023, the team bought replacements at the next booth. Down row D, a vendor sold the same brand of instant film Durán was shooting with. “Ask and La Pulga will provide” became the team’s saying.

The construction-tool sellers work at the back of the market. Past the fence there, a wall reads “FOREIGN” in white capitals. César, 17, sells used tools with three partners. El Tímpano identified him by first name only because he is underage. Their hundreds of tools lie on the ground in chunky rows that look like farm fields. “We help people who likely don’t have enough money to buy good tools, and need to buy them used,” he said in Spanish. Day laborers come to this corner to buy tools, and some come to look for tools stolen from them. On Oct. 21, 2023, Omar Oñate Rivas of San Jose made his first visit, searching for tools taken from a friend’s car. He did not find them, but he bought cheap supplies for his own work as a day laborer. “When you’re stolen from, they bring those used things to La Pulga and sell them,” he said.

The market had made the news that summer. In July 2023, detectives with a California Highway Patrol task force investigated a network believed to be selling stolen Victoria’s Secret items at the market, and saw goods still carrying their original tags. In August two men were arrested, and the merchandise recovered was valued at more than $85,000.

Micheladas, churros, and two stages

West Wind’s markets run taquerias, snack bars, and corn stands, selling breakfast burritos, street tacos, pizza, hot dogs, beer, and margaritas. The market map marks beer gardens among the booths. Gonzalo, a Mexican candy and snacks vendor, sells kettle-cooked potato chips that customers dress with Valentina hot sauce and lime juice. Mayra Sierra of El Tímpano described the churros from the cafeteria as steaming hot, “just as crunchy and sweet” as she had hoped.

Luis Ángel Urbina works construction during the week and sells drinks at La Pulga on weekends: beers, sodas, Micheladas, chips. “On Saturdays and Sundays people come to have fun, to de-stress from their routine, each in their own way,” he wrote. “Some get drunk, others come with their families to walk, to see what is being sold.” Durán put the price of entry at “like a dollar or two,” and said many come “just to hang out and have a couple of Micheladas.”

The market has two stages, one at each end. On weekends, bands play from early afternoon until closing, and as one set ends another begins. Dancers follow the music from one end of the market to the other. On a Sunday afternoon in November 2023 they danced to Los Corsarios Musical, a local cover band, and couples swayed to Ritmo 6. Both bands played popular Mexican music. One booth near El Tímpano’s played Marc Anthony and cumbias all day. In spring 2026 the market’s Facebook page posted a May lineup, “Tocadas de Mayo,” and announced lucha libre on a Sunday starting at noon.

Children have a playground and a bouncy house. A kiddy train winds through the aisles and rings a small bell to warn shoppers it is coming.

Thirty years under a canopy

Nearly every day, Samuelin Martinez, 73, walks the grounds with a cane. He calls his laps “prayer walks” and greets people with a wide, mustachioed smile. He is a longtime community activist. As a young man he lived in High Street Homes, temporary public housing that once stood near the market. “I go where the people are,” he said. “I do traditional healing.”

Maria Villa, 77, came from Mexico as a single mother of two. Around the market she is “Tía María.” She has sold artisan jugs, pots, toys, and decorations for 30 years and keeps business cards in her apron showing the terracotta pottery she imports. The booth helped put her children through college. “These months have been low, but we hope to recover,” she said in Spanish. Blanca Luna, 62, from Guatemala, has also sold there for 30 years. The LED signs flash and the small electronic toys make noise, which makes her booth hard to miss. On a good weekend, she said, she might take home $200 to $250. In 2023 she told reporters that her booth location would be auctioned in December, and she was not sure she could keep it if she was outbid.

Vendors told El Tímpano the market had never regained its pre-pandemic size or crowds, and that inflation had cut into sales. “It’s not what it used to be. Before, it would get so crowded people could barely fit in here. Not anymore,” said Javier Navarro, 70, a snack vendor whom everyone calls “el paisano.” Patricia Beltrán lost her job during the pandemic. She sells craft supplies and clothes, and at the market she can keep her children with her instead of paying for childcare. “This is the only work I’ve been able to invent in order to survive,” she said in Spanish.

These voices were collected over three Saturdays in October 2023, when El Tímpano and the photography organization CatchLight set up their own booth among the vendors. They put up a hand-drawn sign reading “Fotos Gratis.” Patrons asked whether there was a catch. Durán made two instant prints of each person, one to keep and one for a growing wall of portraits. Reporters recorded interviews while the pictures developed. The team photographed more than 75 people, including 14 vendors. Ana Ventura, 58, had been coming for 20 years and posed with her parrot, Roberto. Matthew Levy, 33, said his parents first brought him at five or six, and that he was passing the habit on to his son. Michael Wortham, 62, of San Leandro said, “We need a sanctuary, places to come.” On the last Saturday, as the team packed up, the neighboring booth called out, “ya se van los de las fotos!” (“there go the photo people!”). In June 2024, 81 of the instant photographs went up in downtown Oakland as “Postales de la Pulga.”

A screen seen from the Nimitz

The lot was a drive-in before it was a market. The Coliseum Theater opened on May 22, 1964, with a triple bill: PT-109, Spencer’s Mountain, and McClintock. Southbound drivers on the Nimitz Freeway could see its screen. According to the East Bay Times, there was fear in 1964 that a larger-than-life Elizabeth Taylor would become a traffic hazard.

When The Oaklandside asked an Oakland history group on Facebook for memories in 2020, more than 70 members answered. “I remember watching movies at the Coliseum Drive-in! So much fun piling people into a car,” wrote Dinh Truong. Lisa Hale recalled the early 1970s: “broke, we parked a carload of kids outside the fence and got people inside to toss us the nearest speaker so we could hear The French Connection; the cord was just long enough to hang on the fence.” Mahlika Chavis said the last films she saw there were Poetic Justice and Carlito’s Way, “[sometime around] 1992-93.”

West Wind says its public markets began in the 1980s alongside its drive-in theaters. By 2007 the East Bay Times reported that Oakland had no drive-ins left, and that the 11-acre Coliseum drive-in was a giant swap meet. The screen was still standing in 2020. On a Sunday afternoon in November 2023, the parents of children riding the kiddy train waited beneath it.