A Boomer and A Zoomer Go Antiquing

I’m the Boomer and I’m not. Let’s make that clear.

Zoomer is a best friend. He recently aged into ordering whatever pleases him with his own ID. The Boomer Zoomer tag is his doing. Since I’m a Boomer and I’m not, I’ve been carrying a quiet resentment these past seven years since he hot ironed the branding shortly after our first meeting.

Zoomer is finishing his undergrad these days, so we get together when the opportunity spills. On a chosen shirt stuck to your neck July Saturday, we went antiquing. My idea.

Antiquing. Verb. Being from Pennsylvania I grew up with the term as accepted description of a sentimental journey joyride hunting gems. Antiquing is another form of crawl and crawling is normal behavior for us: books, museums, coffee. This, though, was our first antiquing adventure.

Zoomer usually quietly, and kindly, accommodates my inveterate I’m the Boss and you’re the Intern inertia to do the planning. But he has become wiser. He drives. On this outing Zoomer wears a trucker hat reading “Average Fisherman  - Master Baiter,” offering immediate mood setting for our usual humor.

In our little big town that prefers bulldozing the past, we have a limited choice of antique destinations. We began in a newer establishment, VA Vintage, which recently replaced a large national retailer space with a hodge-podge of secondhand consignment booths. The profoundness of that economic sequence shines awareness that when I look for the past, I always end up in the now.

An immediate attention deficit challenge from all the stuff was accompanied with bad Boomer music. There was a time of genuine song writing and history shifting bands, but it unfortunately paralleled a mass market radio homogenization. For some reason, businesses of all types are prone to playing the latter.

I love the good Boomer tunes. On any given morning, I might be listening to Hendrix at the gym. Stones. Stones live. The Stones were better live. The Beatles sucked live. And, yeah, sure, that might be something a Boomer might know, but I digress.

I slowly became aware I was examining out of time office tools. It started with considering dropping over 50 bucks on a rotary dial desk telephone to put in my workspace in the corporate cubicle farm. That dank 70s Brady Bunch green. The cute curly cord intact. I stood plotting methods of hiding my actual phone under the desk. Next thing I knew, I was fondling a rolodex. Zoomer watched with concern.

The prices were stunningly high. Redesigning my desk with a handful of useless office ephemera priced around $350. A cost too high, I decided, for abstruse protestation of an office culture continuously refusing modernity. And the point would be missed entirely. Most likely, instead, celebrated. Like I said, look for the past, end up in the now.

Our next stop was aptly named Virginia Beach Antique Mall. Aging shelf walls and the drenching stench of dust and mold made it feel more antiquey. I prefer antiquey to second hand for a vibe, and so enthusiastically dove into the sprawl.

A savory find was the sections of old signage and petrolia. I once dreamed of a finished garage with a vintage ride, cornered glass globe gas pumps, and walls of old signs. Zoomer trekked with keen eyes through the back rooms of militaria. I’m always impressed by his seeming encyclopedic knowledge of various aspects of military history. An avid collector of historic uniforms, we waited with deliberate patience for a staff person to open a glass curio for him to thoroughly examine a number of uniform pins of interest. It was all for naught, as none of them were genuine artifacts.

Speakers were playing CCR. Bad Boomer radio rules. The place deserved better. At least try to go back a little further. Maybe some Motown. Sam Cooke.

In the bowels of the mall I noticed a heaviness. It felt more than fatigue of hearing the same playlists for half a century. Or the weird energy of being surrounded by the discarded. It was the weight of printings and objects from the times of civil rights, artifacts from soldiers who served in nation dividing political wars, a news magazine cover of a blue hazed Kent State. Forty year old campaign posters with a Bring America Back tag line. It all felt paralyzingly present.

In the dark hollow of antiques I was standing squarely in the now.

And then, another disturbing moment. A Zoomer. A college-age girl. Arms in full low extension holding a stack of VHS Tapes of what must have been the complete seasons of Friends. Her face looking as if she had found Jesus. And she was taking the good carpenter home all for herself.

Our conversation hovered on the serious on the way to the next shop. Zoomer explained to my aging brain its about imagining a time without phones. A generation is realizing life can be, perhaps should be, lived outside of the addicting screen. And a searching for a third place. That coffee shop where you can catch up with your circle. A neighborhood bar where everyone knows your name. And, yes, VHS and DVD are alive and well as a generation rebels against streaming controls. And since we were talking about the Zoomers we started talking about the Boomers.

Zoomer: 1997 to 2012. A fair range, perhaps. Zoomer seems to be okay with it.

Boomer: 1946 to 1964. I disagree.

Boomers were born after the war. The baby boom. Makes perfect sense. Boomers shaped the 60s and 70s. The British Invasion was already dominating radio by the time I gasped a first breath. I was wearing a flannel onesie and listening to happy bedtime stories when all the Boomer shit was going down.

Granted, there was an intellectualizing recast of my birthtime some years back. Welcome to Generation Jones, as in keeping up with the Joneses, and there’s Trailing Edge Boomers, or, you guessed it, Late Boomers. Like we missed some invitation to greatness, had to crash the party late.

I disagree. I wasn’t late for anything.

Barret Street Antiques feels the real deal. A cavernous warehouse echo with side rooms cluttered with genuine furniture. Queen Anne and Empire and Victorian overwhelm. The damp of old concrete mixed with the smell of aged oak and mahogany and I could drop four figures on a tiger maple side table. We relished brainstorming how to get a massive prewar pub style bar home. Overstated ornate with mixed Baroque and Victorian details. It would fill a living room of an average home. We leaned long on the brass railing considering our options.

Barret Street was playing Marshall Tucker. My bad Boomer radio pain had become the official running joke of our day. Please, someone spin the big bands for change. Sinatra. Fred Astaire singing Broadway out of key. And Ginger was right, she did do everything Fred did, and she did it in heels. And, yeah, sure, maybe that is a reference a Boomer would know, but I digress.

We both dig the mid-century modern room. Oozing a post war wealth and let’s go to the moon optimism. It doesn’t match the pub bar we want to take home, but that’s okay, it will be in a different room.

It was someplace between the 50s style and finding a post war TV set we both wanted I realized one of the reasons we gel so well is we both value history over nostalgia. In a culture rife with nostalgia, it’s a shared, and I think rare, distinction of our very conscious awareness of how we got to the now.

One thing that did separate us was he found things. Bought things.

He bought birds. Ducks. Decoy Ducks. Turns out Zoomer has begun collecting decoys of varying vintage. He found craftmanship and caring and appreciation of the subtle patina of aged colors different woodgrain. He found a little gem of joy at each place.

I found a familiar anger. A lot of longing. And a genuine fatigue for being constantly reminded of how far we should have come but have not come.

I didn’t buy anything.

I was so grateful for Zoomer’s company on our antiquing adventure. Maybe I should work on being more like Zoomer. Forward thinking. Cautiously optimistic. Deliberately mindful of the simple pleasures we can carve from the soft wood of new day. Being like Zoomer might be a better club to join. But, alas, I do usually avoid any type of club that would accept me as a member.

And, yeah, sure, maybe using a Groucho reference in everyday conversation is a sort of thing a Boomer might do.

But I digress.

1. Cover photo by Author. Virginia Beach Antique Mall interior.

2. Front desk, VA Vintage, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Photo by Author.

3. Interior, VA Vintage Virginia Beach, Virginia. Photo by Author.

4. Front desk area, Virginia Beach Antique Mall, Virgina Beach, Virginia. Photo by Author.

5. Back rooms, Virginia Beach Antique Mall, Virgina Beach, Virginia. Photo by Author.

6. Entrance, Barret Street Antique Center, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Photo by Author.

7. Mid-Century furnishings, Barret Street Antique Center, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Photo by Author.

8. Vintage Television, Barret Street Antique Center, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Photo by Author.

© Copyright William Hazel, 2026