Entering Kobey’s Swap Meet is like having a brick thrown in your face. Instantly, you are greeted by the most bizarre and depraved specimens of humanity, wanting something.
“How ‘bout this, kid?” says a profoundly bald man in a t-shirt that hangs down to his knees, brandishing a toilet plunger shaped like a shotgun. “You pump it like this, just like a real gun. How ‘bout it? Fifteen dollars? How ‘bout ten? Five? Man, I’ll give it to you for free. Will you take it off my hands? My wife sent me here to get rid of this thing. She says it’s embarrassing to have around the house. I tell you, kid, I get no respect.” He then launches into an astronomically vulgar explanation of his marital relations (or lack thereof) and says that he would’ve just given the plunger to his son if the kid ever picked up the phone. “Just take the thing, kid,” he says. “It’s all I’ve got.”
Kobey’s is a state of mind, and Plunger Man is in it. Every weekend, thousands of San Diegans — and visitors from near or far — descend on this fenced-off section of the Pechanga Arena parking lot to haggle and barter. Hundreds of vendors set up their tents and tables to hawk everything imaginable: antiques, clothes, weapons, books, second-hand anything, oddities that have to be seen to be believed. Going to Kobey’s opens your mind by force. One’s senses are instantaneously assaulted by every form of bizarre stimuli at once, and the only choices are to roll with it or leave. In this parking lot, filled with people and cluttered with tents, the normal rules of human interaction are suspended. People are wary and suspicious of others in America — if Plunger Man tried to sell his toilet gun to strangers on the street, he might find the real thing cocked and pointed at his face. But at Kobey’s, there is a sort of unwritten pact to live and let live, by necessity if nothing else.
“It’s swell,” says the proprietor of a Second Amendment-themed trinket stand, who declined to give his name for fear of government retribution. “You get all kinds of people coming by here. People have very encouraging things to say. If they like what you’re doing, they’ll come in and tell you. They love this one,” he says, pointing to a t-shirt stamped with a naked woman holding an AR-15 and the words “Come and Take It.” “This is We the People,” he adds, apparently referencing the first sentence of the Constitution. “It’s swell.”
In his box of iron-on patches, one can find the insignia of the Three Percenters — a far-right paramilitary group that took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. When questioned about it, the freedom-loving proprietor merely says, “Oh, that? I’ve never seen it before.”
Monte Kobey, who founded Kobey’s in 1976 and has since gone on to the big swap meet in the sky, is probably looking down with great pride on the haggling orgy of insanity that he created. An average of 20,000 people visit Kobey’s every weekend, and the swap meet has become a treasured San Diego institution. And given its reputation for great deals, Kobey’s has unsurprisingly become a big hit with UC San Diego students.
“Everyone from San Diego has been to Kobey’s or at least knows about it,” Eleanor Roosevelt College senior Chanel Cherow said. “My mom and I were in a hot tub in Mexico, and this guy overhears us talking and says, ‘You’re from San Diego? Have you been to Kobey’s?’”
“It’s one of the more novel attractions in San Diego that isn’t incredibly overpriced,” Earl Warren College junior Yashwin Madakamutil said. “You can find some great shirts, like this one,” he added, gesturing to a shirt that read “It’s not a beer belly — it’s a gas tank for a sex machine.”
Kobey’s is a place to find good deals on useful items like clothing and furniture, but who cares about any of that? It’s easy to forget that you need clothes on your back and chairs to sit on when you’re faced with a huge painting of Malcolm X and Barack Obama smoking cigars with Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, which could be yours for only $20. There are entire stalls filled with medieval weapons and obscure brands of Mexican candy. One Funko Pop vendor displays dueling plastic miniatures of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. If you’ve ever wanted a complete set of commemorative china from Roger Hedgecock’s 1984 mayoral campaign, you’re in luck. (In a contest between two guys with phallic names, Hedgecock defeated Dick Carlson — Tucker Carlson’s dad — only to resign in disgrace over corruption allegations a year later.) Every item has a story, though it would probably be best not to know some of them for legal reasons. It remains a mystery where the people who sell random used bike parts get their stuff, because no one asks.
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” so the cliche goes. It’s dubious whether a Roger Hedgecock plate, a Tupac Shakur Funko Pop, or a toilet plunger that looks like a gun can fairly be called treasure, but good luck finding them anywhere else.
