Rosemont Street mystery: ‘Trading post’ appears along La Jolla Bike Path
Unlike the chalk messages drawn on the La Jolla Bike Path in recent months, a new, less ephemeral structure has appeared.
The wooden kiosk, painted white and bearing the sign “Rosemont Trading Post,” mysteriously showed up a few days before Christmas along the bike path just south of the Rosemont Street entrance.
When the La Jolla Light visited Dec. 30, the trading post was still standing. A sign on the shelf read: “Welcome! Give a little, take a little! See something you like? Please enjoy and take home. Have something to contribute? Leave it here for someone else.”
The sign was displayed amid a mug full of candy canes, a bag of colorful feathers, books, sunglasses, stereo speakers, a plastic water bottle and other household items. Under the trading post were boxes of pine cones and holiday gift bags. Clipped to chicken coop wire along each side were headbands, ribbons and a Christmas stocking.
The top and back were adorned with evergreen garlands and dried oranges.
La Jollan Phyllis Thomson lives near the bike path and walks it three or four times a week but said she didn’t know who put the trading post there.
“It’s a nice structure,” Thomson said. “It’s not junky-looking. They did a nice job.”
“I try to take stuff over there all the time and see the stuff that’s there,” she added. “It’s fun. It’s an uptick in today’s world. We need more positive things. This is definitely one of them.”
The trading post reminds Thomson of “those leave-a-book, take-a-book things that have popped up, except this is more general. It’s a cute idea.”
The Light asked La Jolla Parks & Beaches member Sally Miller, bike path volunteer Debbie Adams and La Jollans Elizabeth Tobias and Molly Bowman Styles if they knew about the trading post’s origin. None of them did, nor did a nearby resident who didn’t give his name.
“I love the bike path trading post,” Bowman Styles said. “I dropped off several bundles of fun items over the holidays. And I’ve also picked up a few for myself.” ◆
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