Volunteers come out in large numbers to turn tiny Briny’s big flea market into a true community affair
Briny Breezes’ annual flea market on Feb. 8 required dozens of volunteers, pictured, and countless hours to pull off, from storing the donations to sorting, moving, arranging and pricing the goods. Photos by Tim Stepien/ The Coastal Star
By Ron Hayes
“We’re going to do housewares next!”
“I need somebody to get ice!”
“Housewares! We need housewares!”
That’s the sound of the men — and women — working on the chain gang.
They are not convicts. They are volunteers.
At 8 a.m. on Feb. 6, more than 200 residents of Briny Breezes gathered to set up this year’s Briny Breezes Bazaar, the little mobile home community’s huge annual flea market.
Such a tiny town. Such a mammoth endeavor.
So much stuff. So many bargains.
The attic of the town’s Hobby Club building is at least 100 feet long, about 50 feet wide, and at 8 a.m. that Thursday the entire space was filled, stuffed, brimming, bursting and jam-packed with a whole year’s worth of donations for the sale.
Bins of shoes. Lamps and linens. Mr. Coffees and microwaves.
A pepper grinder and an egg beater.
And so they began.
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The volunteers call it the chain gang, but bucket brigade would be a more accurate term.
A line of men and women forms in the attic, stretching down the stairs, around the turn in the stairs, down again and outside. For the next four hours, those bins of shoes, lamps and linens will be passed from hand to hand, volunteer to volunteer.
A human chain moves boxes from the attic storage.
Outside, they will be loaded on trucks and golf carts and driven to the auditorium, or the space around the town fountain, or Quonset hut No. 2, or the space outside Quonset hut No. 2.
When the bazaar opens at 8 a.m. Saturday, two days hence, everything must be unpacked and displayed, mostly on tables.
Did we mention that Quonset hut No. 2, just to the north of the Hobby Club, is also filled, stuffed, brimming, etc.?
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The woman overseeing all this is Eileen Duffy, 85, the bazaar’s co-chair, along with Linda Sudds, whose arrival from Canada was delayed by a family illness.
Duffy, whose two sisters and a brother all own homes in Briny Breezes, has been chairing the bazaar since 2012.
You might call her the bazaar czar.
“Every single item will be gone from the attic by 1 today,” she promised, “then we’ll serve hot dogs for the volunteers.”
The donations have been divided into 17 “departments.” Art and bicycles, shoes and cosmetics, electronics, housewares, on and on.
“Plus security and parking,” Duffy added. “People come from all over. Last year we parked 350 cars on the green area, and we’ve never had an accident.”
Every department has an assigned team leader.
Char De Young, 68, is the attic team leader.
“Eileen grabbed me my first year here in 2012,” she said. “She said, ‘Oh, you’re young, you can work on the chain gang.’”
Pat Kemme, 65, leads the linen team.
“Every year I buy two lamps,” she reported. “I enjoy them for a year, and then I donate them back and buy two more lamps.”
Joann Long, whose family owned jewelry stores back in Peoria, Illinois, is on the jewelry team, setting up along the auditorium stage. Now 95, she retired two years ago, but is still chipping in.
“We have a mystery shopper,” she confided. “A man shows up every year with a wad of $100 bills in his pocket and buys about $700 in costume jewelry. I always asked for a lot, so we let him in because it’s worth it. I never asked his name and I don’t know what he does with it all.”
Along with jewelry, the Nearly New department is in the auditorium.
“Someone passes away and we get the treasures when they clean out the trailer,” Duffy explained. That’s the Nearly New department.
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The Briny Bazaar began as a charity auction, founded by Minnie Rawlinson in 1951.
“I would go around and collect the money, and worked on it for 25 years,” she recalled in a 1991 interview.
Seventy-four year later, there is still a silent auction, along with a raffle, as well as the flea market.
And charity is still a part of the project, with 10% of the proceeds from sales — plus the money from the raffle and the silent auction — going to six local charities.
Prices range from cheap to pricey.
“Nothing’s less than a dollar,” Duffy said. “You can’t buy one coffee cup. They’re five for a dollar. We have a wicker chair for $50; that green couch is $100.”
The most expensive items are in the art department, where team leader Sue Thaler, 70, was asking $500 for an original Edna Hibel painting, “a gorgeous piece,” and $1,500 each for two koa wood frames.
What about that maybe van Gogh someone bought for $50 at a Minnesota garage sale?
“You never know,” Duffy said.
Alicia Taylor, 62, leads the boutique department, which came together outside, by the fountain. In Briny Breezes, that word “boutique” is as flexible as it is everywhere else.
“It’s mostly ladies’ stuff,” Taylor said. “Wedding dresses, belts and scarves.” She reached into a basket. “And we’ve got some brand-new boutique hotel slippers from The Bryant Park Hotel in New York City. And some others from Disney World.”
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By 10 a.m. Thursday, the electronics were gone from the attic, along with the home décor, clothing and housewares, but there was still gobs of stuff to be transported.
The swimming flippers and snorkeling gear, for example.
Downstairs, Bobby Jurovaty, 77, was sweating as he waited for the white Ford F-150 to be loaded.
“I have no idea where I’m taking this stuff,” he said. “Some woman will yell at me.”
And somehow it all got done by 1 p.m.
The attic was empty, the drivers transported everything, and the volunteers got their free lunch.
Last year, the lunch team cooked 200 Nathan’s All-Beef hot dogs. There weren’t any left.
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Come Saturday morning, people really have come from all over. There’s a line outside the auditorium waiting to hit all those tables, and within an hour, Briny Breezes is swarming with bargain hunters.
Geraldine Plaia of Ocean Ridge found a marble ashtray for $3, eight glasses for $2, and a baseball cap for $2.
“We support charity,” she said, “and you always find a little something you didn’t think you needed.”
On her second year here, Joann Stephens of Delray Beach got shoes, purses, a rug, kitchen towels, two champagne glasses and a pitcher for her lemonade. All for $42.50.
“I’m on disability,” she explained, “so I won’t go to the mall. I can’t afford it.”
Wolfgang Starck of Montreal found a $2 pewter porringer that may or may not be an antique, but he wasn’t concerned.
“I do reenactments of the War of 1812,” he said. “We’re Macaw’s Privateers, on the British side, and porringers were very well known in the group. I don’t know how authentic it is, but it’s definitely the size, shape and material from those days.
“This is the fourth I’ve found at flea markets.”
And then there was Glen Hudgin, waiting outside the Quonset hut while his wife, Karen, shopped inside. He held a pair of headphones, a Swiffer floor polisher, and a border collie on a leash.
Jack, the border collie, was family, not a purchase.
Does he like shopping at the Briny Breezes Bazaar?
“No,” Hudgin said. “But my wife does. I’m just here to carry stuff and try to figure out how to fit it all in the car when we go back to Toronto.”
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The Edna Hibel painting and koa wood frames didn’t sell this year, but a lot of the lamps and linens, microwaves and toasters, books and bracelets did.
Treasures were found. Money was made.
“It’s safe to say we made right around $20,000 that will be put back into our community,” Sue Brannen, the bazaar’s treasurer, reported. “And so far, because I continue to collect charity donations, we have $1,500 to divide among our charities. We did well.”
Proceeds from the raffle and silent auction, plus 10% of the bazaar day sales, will be divided among the Caridad Center, CROS Ministries’ soup kitchen, and Shop With A Cop, among others.
On the Tuesday after the bazaar, many of the items left unsold were picked up by Delray Beach’s Habitat For Humanity ReStore outlet.
And now the little town with the big bazaar is ready for 2026.
“There will be new stuff donated tomorrow,” Brannen said, even before this year’s bazaar had ended.
The Hobby Club attic is empty, and waiting.
Bicycles for sale circle the memorial fountain.
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