(Me on the far left, Bethie Cebert, Siana Pierce)
Out of all the antique stores in Spokane, there is only one where a giant metal statue of a dinosaur in standing in the front.
Dennis Held and Connie Grove, husband and wife, opened Area 58 four years ago.
"The building was built in 1949," said Held. "It was originally a flower shop until one day I was driving by and they were in the middle of repairing it. I talked to the owners and came to an agreement to finish the inside in exchange for a reasonable rent."
Held came up with the name Area 58 because he was born in 1958. But it's also a play on Area 51, where alien conspiracy theorists believe that the government is keeping aliens.
"Just to associate it with the oddness and mysticism of that (Area 51)," said Held.
Bethany Cebert, a junior at Mead High School noted that the layout of the store is somewhat similar to a house.
"I like the fact that they portrayed the store as a house it makes the customers feel more comfortable inside and each of the items tie in with the theme."
With all the great lighting, Grove said that was how they intended the store to be like.
"There's even a kitchen area, which is a part of the original workshop for the florist," said Grove.
“The going out and finding them (the antiques) is the fun part of this job,” said Held.
When the store first started the objects were mostly from smaller second hand stores like Teen Challenge. These often support community based projects and becoming a part of that is what Dennis and Connie wanted to do; be the kind of business that is extremely local.
Everything from old sofas to radios, some of the objects in the store are 40,50 and even 100 years old.
"Every single thing in here had a story behind it," said Held. "We try to put things on the floor that are distinctive; almost everything we sell the person who buys it has some sort of emotional attachment through a memory."
Although majority of customers are older than 50, Held said that a lot of young families that come in reinstall his faith in young people. Most of what they sell to the younger generations includes items to artists, old broken clock faces, chipped pottery and pieces of fabric. Those are the kind of things that get re-used by the young people, as they are turning away from mass produced plastic and combining the old and new in different ways.
"We have a big contingent of people from the college," said Held. "College students from Gonzaga, to the kind of scrappy, punked, do it yourselfers who come in here and buy a wrench because they want to hang it from a jacket they wear, and everyone in between."
And the dinosaur that stands in the front? It's work by a guy named Bill Sanders who is a Spokane artist and metal worker.
"We've actually sold a couple of his over-sized dinosaurs," said Held. "I met him when I first came to Spokane ten years ago and we started out having a giant praying mantis of his; he's been with us ever since we've started,"
