La Parada is rumored to have been a stagecoach stop on the historic El Camino route between Santa…read moreFe and Mexico City. If so, I doubt that it looked anywhere near as colorful and beautiful as it does now. The tagline on the 4th Street entrance sign (shared with Farm & Table) is "world decor/gifts/vintage," and it fits the place to a tee. But they easily could have added "flowering trees," "flowing water," "blooming gardens," "radiant sunshine," "world music," "retro chic," or any number of other descriptors.
Some of the items here are bulky and best suited for local purchase and use, especially the hand-painted garden planters and exquisite ceramics and wooden sculptures on display inside the store on the first floor. Others, like the funky vintage items in the upstairs "Retro Kitchen," are ideal as traveling gifts for self, friends, or family. It's hard to describe everything else, which ranges from small ceramic suns and moons to day of the dead key rings, blank note cards, bear-shaped coin purses, scarves, gloves, necklaces, and a full compliment of exotic, alluring, aesthetically intriguing outerwear for women and men. Everything is carefully arranged and tastefully presented, but it's not so precious that you'd be afraid to bring your 2-year inside for a look. This isn't a Dale Chihuly gift shop, or a place for showing off 50-year old aged balsamic in Venetian hand-blown glass. The painted birdhouses and potted plant burros, frogs, and chickens are tougher than they might look.
If you ever are tempted to convert 100% of your shopping dollars to on-line retail, visiting La Parada may make you reconsider. Like an approaching stagecoach stop that people yearned to reach after days of dusty, sun-baked travel on bone-rattling roads and perilous river crossings, some places are best experienced in person, with the hands and fingers and optic nerves that millions of years of evolutionary history have crafted, one natural selection at a time.
Whenever I visit a unique and lovingly-tended place like La Parada, I wonder how many times a particular key chain or coin purse or flower pot has been looked at, touched, talked about, before finally finding a buyer. I imagine the leather being stitched, the ceramic being painted, the face of St. Francis being sanded, the birds on his shoulder being attached, the fabric being woven, dyed, and sewn, the boxes being lined with packing materials in La Paz, Las Cruces, Southern India, Sulawesi, or Isfahan. And then, like magic, they appear within range of your vision. You look, you touch, you ponder, and if the stars align and the price is right, you purchase. And then you pack up your belongings, cast a skeptical glance outside at the dark clouds gathering on the horizon, get back in your SUV-sized stagecoach, say your goodbyes and bon voyage's and vaya con dios's, and you move on to the next stop of the journey, with your new bear-shaped coin purse and painted ceramic sun and moon wrapped up securely next to your seat, no doubt curious about where they will be going next.
