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On a Thursday night in Fridley, people sit playing bingo in vintage bamboo chairs, at an old vinyl booth and under a sixties-style fringed floral umbrella.

“We're gonna play a round of regular bingo to start the evening. That's one straight line, okay? It's also the straightest thing you should be doing during Pride month,” says host and drag performer Tomi Saint James. 

James intersperses LGBTQ history about activists like 

“This is a friendly reminder to check in on your queer friends, especially your trans friends, they could probably use it right now,” James says.

It’s First Thursday Drag Bingo at Wild Things Antiques’ coffee shop, The Clapping Monkey. It’s one of many monthly events at the antique mall, including Drag Trivia and Wild Vintage Market, hosted monthly in the parking lot.

“We feel a huge need in the Twin Cities community creating sober spaces that are queer,” says David Wenzel.

Wenzel and his partner Joshua Larson are co-owners of 

, which they opened in Fridley in 2022. Currently, the entryway is filled with a rainbow display of vintage Blenko glass.

“We collect it pretty hardcore,” Wenzel says. “So, the rainbow glass display in the front was a give-in for Pride Month.”

The antique mall covers 20,000 feet with more than 60 vendors (known as the Wild Vintage Collective) selling just about anything you can imagine: tiki furniture, mod clothing, 80s board games and toys, mid-century modern lamps, vintage tees, Frankoma and Red Wing pottery, velvet paintings, crewel embroidery, wicker sculptures and so so much more.

“Even all of our vendors are somehow a part of the queer community, or have loved ones that are part of the queer community,” Larson says.

Centering the queer community, and the antique mall as a safe and sober space for them, was part of the original concept, says Larson. 

“Why does Minneapolis not have a space like this?” Larson remembers asking.  “We were like, ‘Okay, well, maybe we have to make it ourselves.’”

“Our identity as a queer couple was going to be on the forefront of what we were doing as a business,” Larson says. “Because we didn't want to, A, hide the fact that we were a queer couple and B, we wanted to empower other queer people and other queer couples.”

Wenzel grew up in Ohio, where his parents ran an antique shop. In high school, he worked in the family business and another antique shop down the street. He bought his first two cars with money earned through buying and reselling items.

“You were like the local child prodigy,” Larson says to Wenzel.

“It became like this drive and addiction, and it was kind of like, “Oh, I can find cool stuff and share it with people and support myself? This is pretty cool,’’ Wenzel says.

As a teen in Minnesota in the early 2000s, Larson and his brother and sisters worked at 

, “one of the most prominent queer spaces in Minneapolis” at the time. This experience became the inspiration for the onsite “pop and pop” coffeehouse The Clapping Monkey. 

“It was so special for me to be able to learn from them and to grow up in a space where I could be myself,” Larson says.

Wenzel and Larson met when Larson, who is also a family nurse practitioner at the University of Minnesota, moved to Cincinnati for a nursing program.

The first time Wenzel went to Larson’s home, he started picking up his decor. 

“I started flipping everything over, and he's like, ‘What is this crazy person doing?” says Wenzel, laughing. “I'm like, I'm looking to see who made it, what's the story behind it?”

They bonded over a love for vintage glassware, mid-century modern design and junglesque aesthetics. 

“Ultimately, we started dating, and we would go thrifting, go to antique malls — I took him to his first auction, and he's like, do you want to do a booth in an antique mall?” Wenzel says.

A booth turned into a storefront in Cincinnati, and then in Minnesota, to be closer to Larson’s family. Larson’s sister, Lindsey Larson, is a manager and vendor at the Fridley store.

Growing up in the industry, Wenzel says he recognized there was very little diversity.

“The antique world can be very old and white and straight and intimidating,” he says. “So, I think for us trying to create this place that all are welcome here, and you can be yourself 100 percent, and we will do our damnedest to build that space.”

The store’s name is inspired by Maurice Sendak’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are,” drawing on a specific line: “The walls became the world all around.”

“It's this idea that you really can take control over what your life is based on what you put around it, and who you put around it, and where you decide to land with it,” Larson says. ”The shop grew out of that concept.”

Wild Things Antiques is open every day of the week. Drag Bingo is every first Thursday and Drag Trivia is every third Thursday

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Alex V. Cipolle

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At Wild Things Antiques in Fridley — a queer-owned, 20,000-square-foot vintage mall and sober community space — monthly events like First Thursday Drag Bingo blend LGBTQ history, Pride-themed decor and inclusive celebration with the owners’ mission to create a welcoming, diverse alternative to the often exclusionary world of antiques.

Wild, safe and sober: An antique mall in Fridley centers the queer community

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