Raymond Youbert of Chatsworth had struggled to find parking out in the gravel lot Sunday morning alongside Soledad Canyon Road in Saugus. He was making quite the trek from his car to the Santa Clarita Swap Meet at the Saugus Speedway when he saw the long line of people waiting to go in and shop.
Youbert said he’d been coming to the twice-weekly market regularly for over 30 years. He didn’t know Sunday was the last time vendors would be selling goods there.
“That’s the line?” he asked when he saw how many people were waiting to get in. “Holy moly. I’ve never seen any big lines like this before.”
He’d enjoyed coming to the swap meet over the years to buy fishing gear, Christmas decorations and other rare finds, all at great prices, and now that the swap meet is finished, he said, he doesn’t know where he’s going to go.
Last Tuesday, the Santa Clarita City Council struck a bargain with the Integral Communities regarding a plan to build 318 homes and more than 100,000 square feet of warehouse space on the speedway site. Sunday was the last day of the swap meet and, according to Doug Bonelli, who’s one of the longtime owner/managers of the place with seven other cousins, it was the busiest he’d seen it.
“I’m really sad for all the people I’ve worked with for years and years,” he said. “I have a lot of fond relationships here.”
According to Bonelli, the Santa Clarita Swap Meet goes back to 1964. He said that, at one time, people used to park their cars in the old Kmart lot where Soledad Canyon Road meets Valencia Boulevard, and they’d take a bus to the speedway.
Asked what he was going to do once the swap meet closed for good, Bonelli said, “I’m 70 years old. I’ve got grandkids. I sold my other business, so, I guess I’m going to sleep. People don’t understand how much goes into this.”
On Sunday, Bonelli had 37 employees working at the event, about 600 vendors he’d brought in, and so much paperwork to complete.
“The state’s after us, the feds are after us,” he said. “There are a lot of people here, and everyone has to sign everything.”
As for the vendors and what they’ll do next, Bonelli said most of them are selling their goods at other swap meets and other venues. He expected that most of them would be fine.
“But as the owner — I’ve been doing this for 18 years — I don’t think I ever met a vendor who makes money,” Bonelli said with a chuckle. “I say to them, ‘You’re here every Sunday, and you’ve never made a dime, huh?’”
Many swap-meet regulars were taking advantage of the one last time they’d be able to enjoy what they called a “Santa Clarita Valley institution.”
Saugus resident Bob Bence said he’d been going to the swap meet for 20 years, sometimes just to take a stroll through the place with a cup of coffee and not really any intentions to buy. He was there on Sunday with his two sons.
“These guys,” he said, referring to his boys, “don’t ever come. They said, ‘Hey Dad, I’m going to go with you because it’s the last day.’ I’ve never seen the parking like this.”
Bence and his sons were coming out of the swap meet with the day’s haul: some shirts, plastic bags and soap. Now that the Santa Clarita Swap Meet was closing, Bence said he’d have to find another swap meet to visit, perhaps in the San Fernando Valley, Ventura or in Palmdale.
Security guard Steve Schlund, who grew up in the SCV, said the last time he saw the place so full was when he was a kid in the 1980s. His mom was a vendor at the time.
“She’d drag us here on our Sundays to help her work,” Schlund said. “I mean, we were kids. She’d wake us up at 4 in the morning. I’d say, ‘I don’t want to go.’ We’d help her set up. It was cold.”
Schlund, a retired department of corrections worker, picked up the security job at the swap meet about a year ago. He said he met so many nice people and was going to miss seeing them every Sunday. Now that his swap meet gig was ending, he was hoping to pick up security guard work with the Los Angeles Dodgers and maybe some other odd jobs on the side.
He said he was also going to miss the Saugus Speedway, which, as a racetrack, closed in the summer of 1995. He went to track to see races all the time, and he even went there for his younger brother’s high school graduation. Saugus High School normally held graduation ceremonies at the College of the Canyons, he said, but after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the stadium, he added, had been deemed unsafe and so, they did it at the track.
And then there was the time in August 1985 when Schlund was at the track.
“Remember the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez?” he asked. “The night he was caught — I was here with my dad. We were in the stands, and in between the races, they stopped, and they said, ‘We want to tell everybody that they caught the Night Stalker, and they beat him in the head with a pole.’ We were all cheering.”
Others with fond memories of the place included Joe Howell of Foothill Nursery, who’d been a vendor at the Santa Clarita Swap Meet for 32 years. He was saddened when he learned the property would be sold.
“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed the people here. And I’ve had a lot of customers. A lot of repeat customers.”
One repeat customer there on Sunday was Pinky Biondo. She was looking at various plants to buy.
“How much is this?” she asked Howell, to which he responded with the price of $20. “Can I keep it alive indoors or does it have to be outside?”
“No,” Howell told her. “Indoors, good light.”
Biondo held onto the plant to purchase and continued browsing.
Vendors at the swap meet were selling everything from clothing, auto parts and audio equipment, to antiques, power tools and groceries. Century 21 had a booth with pictures of homes for sale. Guests could also look into purchasing funeral insurance at another booth. And then there was fresh produce, Italian ice and so much more.
The Brothers and Others Band played live music for guests as they traversed what Bonelli called “The Main,” or the main walkway of the swap meet. And there were food trucks so people could eat during their time there.
Carlos Baraona had been parking his “La Diabla” truck at the swap meet for 11 years, serving up tacos, burgers and what some guests called his “classic asada fries.”
“We were supposed to be in that spot for just a little bit,” Baraona said, pointing to where his truck was parked. “And then they just left us right there. It’s a great spot and it’s been amazing. Beautiful memories.”
Then there was Victor Torres Jr. with his Grayskull Vinyl booth. His vinyl records store is located just down the street on Soledad Canyon Road in Canyon Country, but it all began at the swap meet.
“We’ve been at the swap meet for 14 years now,” he said, adding that he was sad it would be ending. “This is what helped us to start the record store. We started here at the swap meet with three little boxes. And then throughout the years, we just started getting more and more records.”
Eventually, Torres Jr. was able to open his store. On Sunday morning, he said he’d had the store for the past three years, six months and 27 days.
“We built rapport here with people who have been buying records from us throughout the years,” he said. “And then they started buying records from us over at the store. But we still get a lot of traffic here. Now, we’re going to try to concentrate on that (the store) on Sundays. But yeah, it’s sad to see this go.”
All morning, people kept pouring into the Santa Clarita Swap Meet, taking in the experience one last time. To so many folks in the community, it was more than just a place to find good buys. In the end, it was the inevitable goodbye from them to a dear tradition they’d kept for years.