Life in modern Los Angeles can be wild… especially if you’re not from this era. Just take it from the volunteers at Echo Park’s Time Travel Mart. It’s a place where a glance up at a security monitor reveals browsing Victorians and spacemen stocking up on anti-cloning fluid and silly putty. Extinct birds languidly sip tea in the window display. The Employee of the Month wall photos highlight medieval knights, Vikings, and cyborgs. At its surface, it’s a convenience store for time travelers who are in a hurry to get whenever they’re going. But it hides something greater. Yes, even greater than a Time Travel Mart, believe it or not.
The Colossal Task of Defining the Time Travel Mart
With a sign emblazoned on the facade of the building stating “Whenever You Are, We’re Already There”, it’s no surprise that the Time Travel Mart is ambiguous about its origins. Perhaps not wanting to risk a paradox, they’ll give you the date of their opening in Echo Park as 2008 if pressed. A second Time Travel Mart opened up in Mar Vista in 2012. Of course, that’s assuming you believe time is linear.
But the minds behind the weirdest store in Echo Park (and that’s saying something) would rather have you believe it was built somewhere (somewhen?) beyond space and time. Their website alludes to lost years in equally lost dimensions with details having been swallowed by a cataclysmic black hole. Or possibly those details will be swallowed by a black hole someday. Maybe both.
The Booming Time Tourism Industry
At its surface, Echo Park’s Time Travel Mart is a convenience store, albeit one for time tourists. Beyond a storefront window in which the mannequin of an aghast caveman reaches tentatively to clasp hands with a retrofuturistic robot in a handshake heard ‘round the timeline, visitors can purchase all manner of time-oriented (and disoriented) paraphernalia.
Dinosaur eggs of all different sizes sit beneath heat lamps in incubated mystery. You can grab a can of primordial soup from one aisle and a bottle of robot milk on the next. Browse photocopied pamphlets on self-defense through the ages or simply renew your pastport. They even sell time itself. Purchase a glittering bag of 15 Minutes of Fame, a canister of 5 More Minutes for that expired parking meter, and 365 Days of Bottled Time, conveniently in sand form for your hourglass.
A Front for 826LA
But behind the Time Travel Mart stands a surprising truth that the storefront masks. The Time Travel Mart is actually used to fund a non-profit organization called 826LA. A chapter of the Dave Eggers and Nínive Calegari co-founded 826 National, 826LA focuses on tutoring children through workshops and afterschool programs. These efforts aim to inspire children creatively with a particular focus on writing. On any given visit, you may hear the sound of between 20 and 30 children learning to express themselves through healthy and safe creative outlets. And, yes, the Time Travel Mart’s proceeds go directly toward funding these efforts.
Barnacle & Barnacle
Part of 826LA’s success is that its children aren’t creating in a black hole, so to speak. Their efforts often result in concrete payoffs. A big part of this comes down to the Time Travel Mart’s in-house publishing company, Barnacle & Barnacle Publishers. Each month, Barnacle & Barnacle puts out a hard copy of a story written by a student of the 826LA program. The story is then sold alongside publications by other students in the Time Travel Mart. Just look for the freezer full of Barnacle & Barnacle media. Why a freezer? For time reasons, we can only assume.
Chickens in Love
Students of the 826LA program are encouraged to run with their creativity. In 2010, the organization released a benefit album, Chickens in Love, in which notable musical artists performed songs written by 826LA students. Some of the artists who collaborated for the release include:
- Fiona Apple
- Cold War Kids
- Dum Dum Girls
- Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
- The Growlers
- Tim & Eric
Pirates, Superheroes, and Spies
So what does time travel have to do with creative writing? Other than facilitating an inspiring environment for creativity, not a lot. But there’s still a method to the minute-monitoring mania of the Time Travel Mart serving as a front for 826LA. Basically, San Francisco made them do it. Allegedly, when Eggers and Calegari sought to establish the first 826 location as a reading center in San Francisco, the city told them they’d need to establish some sort of storefront.
Finding the most absurd route through this hoop, they started the Pirate Supply Store. And, yes, it’s spiritually kin to the Time Travel Mart, though it caters to a more scallywagging clientele. Other locations followed on the heels (do peg legs have heels?) of the Pirate Supply Store. There was Brooklyn’s Superhero Supply Store and Chicago’s Boring Store, a covert location for spies to stock up on their top-secret gear. And each location serves as the face for another 826 National chapter’s operations.
Good Ideas and Great Causes
Currently, the window display features a Tea Party for Extinct Birds, an installation created by artist Mollie McElvain as part of the Time Travel Mart’s artist residency program. Make sure to pause for the crocheted Hawaiian Honeycreepers languidly sipping from tiny cups alongside rug-punched Guam Kingfishers while on your way to stock up on robot milk. Who knows when you’ll get another chance? But don’t forget to pick up something when you visit the Time Travel Mart. You know the money’s going to a good cause. And perhaps that’s what the Time Travel Mart really shows us. Across the eons, kindness is timeless.
