Trying to get to know Ron Slattery is like rummaging through the piles at the flea markets he frequents: It’s much simpler to just enjoy the random finds amid the hodgepodge than to get all worked up looking for something in particular. That’ll make you crazy. Among the details the otherwise highly affable Slattery is reluctant to disclose are where he lives, his age (“Ancient. 43, I think. What year is this? Forty-four?”), and his eBay user name (“Never, never, never will I tell anyone that”).
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Though he was born into the business, it took Slattery a while to get into it himself. After high school he held odd jobs for several years. In his mid-20s he married a woman he’d known for a few weeks and moved with her to California. “We got to San Francisco penniless, with nobody we could really call for help,” he says. “So we went out for pizza—we figured we’d be full for the day. We kind of told the waiter our story, and he came back with a place mat and a key. On the back of the place mat he drew a map to where his apartment was, and he said, ‘You guys stay here till you get on your feet. I’ll crash with my girlfriend.’ One day we found a place to move into and he said, ‘Leave the key on the counter, man.’ His name was Scott. I never saw him again.”
The marriage didn’t last, but Slattery stayed on the west coast, managing various clubs and restaurants. Later he moved to Minneapolis to help an acquaintance run a nightclub there. “It was OK for a while,” he says. But eventually, “I had one of those midlife things where you say, ‘What do I really like?’ And what I like is junk.”
For a long time he didn’t realize the value of the photos he loved, Slattery says. “I was just going to, like, shellac them to a van or something.” Instead he made a Web site. In 2004 he created Big Happy Fun House (bighappyfunhouse.com), an online sampler of his photo collection, which he now updates daily. It’s garnered a respectable following of aficionados, though its founder doesn’t always agree with some of their interpretations. “I guess it’s like standing next to someone at the Art Institute looking at a painting, and they start talking about ducks, and it’s an abstract, and you’re like, ‘Ducks, we’ll go with that,’” he says.
“No, goofing off,” he said, in a friendly-but-no-time-for-talk way. Buyers who know what they’re doing don’t go in for a lot of chitchat, especially first thing in the morning. While you’re asking a buddy about his weekend, someone else is beating you to a vintage Fiestaware egg cup or original Harry Callahan photo.
“Old hand-decorated crock held together with electrical tape,” one of Slattery’s friends told him. “Some guy and his wife who sell Beanie Babies for a living. Last I heard it was up to $14,800.”
