Page 141 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL SPRING 2021 REDISCOVERING CALIFORNIA'S CENTRAL COAST

Remarkably, that’s not the weirdest thing I wit-
nessed at Bosco’s. That honor went to Rocki, the
pet squirrel perched on the shoulder of Neil
Davies, a satellite engineer whose white cowboy
hat and bushy white mustache lent him a passing
resemblance to Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski.
“He will bite,” Davies warned, although I ven-
tured a swift stroke of his fur when Rocki’s eyes
began to droop. When his adoptive dad suddenly
announced “he just peed on me,” we took that as
our cue to depart.
Antiques With A Twist
I tried to count the number of antiques stores
along Niles Boulevard, but I lost track after a
dozen. Browse for books about Niles’ history, as
well as fictional works by local authors like Gloria
B. Gates, at Keith’s Books and Collectibles. If it’s
the weird and wonderful you’re after, it’s easy to
fall down a rabbit hole—or should I say, a man-
hole—at Mantiques, which specializes in “manly
antiques.” Imagine a mash-up of frat house detri-
tus and the unidentifiable lumps of metal you
might find in your Dad’s garage, and you’ve got
the picture. On my visit, I spied a rubber cobra, a
stuffed weasel, bobble heads of sports figures, au-
tographed baseballs, an old whipped cream maker
that looked uncannily like an unexploded shell,
and—my favorite—a collection of empty beer
cans.
Toy Trauma--a shop within a shop at Man-
tiques—is a toy collector’s Valhalla. I was tempted
to buy an “interactive Yoda” for my Dad’s birth-
day, but the chatty shopkeeper in an Andy Capp
cap wasn’t sure it interacted anymore. Never
mind. There was plenty more to choose from, like
a remote-control Batmobile, Matchbox cars, and
figurines of Godzilla, Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a
cadre of other critters which would require a PhD
in comic book lore to identify.

The renovated Niles train station, which
dates to 1909, features a locomotive mu-
seum. A pleasure train still runs between
Niles and Sunol. Copyright Amy Laughing-
house

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