The Alewife

The watch word is fun

by Audrey Resutek

If antique collector Jerry S. Gordon’s store were to go up in flames the first thing he said he would save, after his extensive collection of watches, is a wooden apple crate.

The crate was sent to America in the late 1960s,  and contained some of the first records made by the Beatle’s record company, Apple Corps.  On one side, there is the trademark green grannysmith apple along with the taglines: “Keeps the doctor away” and “Grown in England.”

Brightly lit and spacious, Fun Antiques at 2230 Massachusetts Ave. is packed with an eclectic mix of gems like the apple crate that set it apart from other antique stores.

Fun Antiques’ “grape reflection” colored walls are home to an exciting array of curiosities, from cast iron barware, to a 1940’s banjo, to rock posters from the Boston Tea Party, the psychedelic rock venue formerly at 15 Lansdowne St. 

“We have the best vintage mic collection you’ll find anywhere,” Gordon said.
Gordon’s collection of vintage microphones is so impressive that he rents them out to theatres and filmmakers.

Tucked away in a corner of the neatly ordered shop is a cluttered tool bench where Gordon repairs radios, musical instruments, antique telephones, and watches.

“I’ve always had a fascination with electrical and mechanical things,” he said. “How they work or how to repair them.”

It was this fascination that he said led him to go into the antique business 18 years ago, starting at a group shop called Sadye & Co. at 182 Mass. Ave.

Gordon called his own venture Monkey Business/Fun Antiques, he said. In November, when he set up shop in North Cambridge, he shortened to Fun Antiques to better suit the store’s classier location.

It is just a few doors down from the neighborhood’s public mansion, the Cambridge House Bed and Breakfast.

Seidel deals with the doable

by Audrey Resutek

President John F. Kennedy question to Americans to ask what they could do for their country had a profound effect on Alewife columnist Sam Seidel.

“Kennedy brought to national politics this notion that there was a call to serve—that there was a noble aspect to public service,” Seidel said. “ I feel that still.”

Seidel has seen firsthand how important politics is to people’s lives. Before working in Washington himself he was a student at The University of California at Berkeley.

“Activism was a real theme in the Bay Area,” he said.

After earning a bachelors in classics from Berkeley in 1988 Seidel traveled to Berlin to learn German. Although he was physically in Italy when the Berlin Wall came down, he was able to comprehend the “It was euphoric for Germans,” he said.

“As an observer it was a very exciting moment in history. Everything was so loaded with symbolism.”