it's a flea country

Where does all that stuff come from? And where does it all go?
Those were the two questions I couldn't get out of my mind as I made my first visit for about a year to the giant flea market that surrounds the Pasadena Rose Bowl on the second Sunday of every month.
For those who haven't been, or don't remember the 1994 soccer World Cup Final, the Rose Bowl is a massive stadium holding 100,000 seated, so to circle it with stalls selling everything from pickled olives to attic junk is quite an achievement. But the flea market does that with ease: in addition there is a massive overspill into an adjoining car park (sorry, US friends, parking lot).
So, like most things American, the flea market is on a grand scale and goes to the extremes. And it is, naturally, a big moneyspinner for the organisers, who charge everyone at least $8 admission - more if you turn up before 9am to snap up the early-bird bargains - on top of what the stallholders pay.
As with most flea markets, it is hard to see how a lot of the stallholders make money. Some are straightforwardly commercial, selling stuff they have bought wholesale like the pickled olives, or calenders, knick-knacks or even toy bicycles. Most of that sort of thing will be on sale or return, so the stallholders probably won't have to pay for the goods until they sell them and their only risk is the time they spend.
But, by numbers of stalls, the overwhelming majority of the goods are second-hand, hence the premium for early entry. Many of the stalls clearly offer the contents of attics, garages, garden sheds, basements or long-neglected cupboards, though plenty are organised neatly enough to indicate that they have been taken off the original owners by traders. Everything from moose heads to ancient clockwork alarm clocks, umpteen decorated mirrors, decorations that have survived too many Christmases before being retired - it's all there and must eventually find a home I suppose.
The overspill area is almost entirely second-hand clothes: dresses, jeans, coats, jackets and row after row after row of shoes and boots, as far as the eye can see and beyond. It must take hours to lay out, and there was very little sign of any of the contents of this great junk yard being bought. And the stallholders didn't seem bothered, possibly because they were just hired hands paid a straight fee for being there for the day. At one zone - stall is too modest a word for it - four girls were sitting on the ground, happily riffling through a huge pile of scarves going for $1 a time to the accompaniment of a pop radio program.
There were a few hucksters. One stand had punters with their shoes off with their feet in some sludgy, orange-brown liquid that was supposed to draw the toxins out of their body at a mere $35 a go, allegedly reduced from $50 or $100 depending on their gullibility. Sue and Lynne made some sceptical inquiries and in return were given a free 10-second treatment for their aches and pains. This amounted to being poked with a mild electric shock, which did Sue some good, but it was hard to see what the shock treatment had to do with putting your feet into a bucket of sludge.
For most visitors, though, the $8 was a fee to peer into other people's lives, see what sort of thing they owned before it ended on this gigantic scrap heap and was deemed saleable by stallholders willing to get up in the middle of the night to claim their spot and lay out their wares. It suggests there is more to all this than meets the eye, but they clearly fee it is worthwhile, and the rest of us are mildly entertained until our feet tell us it is time to return to the car and the real world.