Boulder Creek Antiques at Mac's Place: The Booths on Highway 9
On June 8, 2020, while downtown storefronts were dark, Glenda Mecredy, Meg Aliano and Ali Norrbom bought Boulder Creek Antiques at Mac's Place. They reopened it on July 2.
The room still works as a collection of individual dealer spaces, dense with jewelry, glassware, records, clothing, plants and collectibles. A stroller is difficult to steer through it; a baby in a carrier has wall-to-wall material to study.
Mac was Manus C. McCarry, who bought the bar on this spot in March 1944 and put his name over the door within days. The shop's current owners and the older room meet under that sign.
What is inside
Antiques and vintage across the usual range: homewares, glass, vintage toys, gems and minerals, and gifts. Because the booths change hands and restock separately, the shop's own line for it is "New items. Every. Single. Day."
Two corners have their own names. The Serendipity Boutique is the back room, where the vintage clothing lives. The Cats' Garden, also in the back, sells plants. Local makers turn up in the mix as well, including hand-painted Boulder Creek ornaments that come out ahead of the holidays and tend not to last.
Mac's takes part in First Friday, when makers set up outside and the doors stay open late.
Three dealers, one strange year to buy a shop
Buying an antiques store is a bet that the past still has customers. Glenda Mecredy, Meg Aliano and Ali Norrbom made that bet on June 8, 2020, which was not an obvious moment to take on a storefront, and held the grand reopening on July 2.
It wasn't a leap into the unknown. Glenda Mecredy had bought and sold through the shop for almost seventeen years, and Ali Norrbom had already been a dealer there for twelve. Chris Flynn had run Mac's Place for eighteen years before retiring with her husband, Bill. Norrbom said she stepped into ownership so Flynn could retire and focus on her Etsy shop.
Mecredy has been in the trade since the 1970s. She ran Petticoat Junktion in Ben Lomond in the late seventies and early eighties, and she keeps her own space here, Glenda's Corner. Aliano puts the appeal of the work plainly: "I love every aspect of the business, from the thrill of hunting for the treasure, to the satisfaction of researching an item's history, and then the pure joy of artfully displaying it."
That experience shapes what reaches the floor and how it is researched and displayed.
Who Mac was, and what stood here before
Manus C. McCarry bought the bar on this spot from Otto D. Holm in March 1944 and had his own name on it within days. He was born in Ireland around 1896, went first to Philadelphia, and came to California in 1930. He ran the place for about twenty-five years and died in October 1970. His wife Erma kept it going until she died in 1972.
What he is remembered for is the parade. For more than twenty years McCarry sponsored and personally led Boulder Creek's St. Patrick's Day celebration, in a green top hat with a baton-cane, with pipers brought down from San Francisco. There is still a shamrock painted on the front of the building.
The room was old before he got it. It was Goslaw's Tavern, and then Otto's Refreshment Parlor when Holm reopened it in January 1941. The 1944 bill of sale lists what came with the place: a juke box, a player piano, one cash register, two meat slicing machines, and "stuffed birds and animals, old guns, antiques and relics, glassware." The clutter people come here for is older than the antique shop, and older than Mac. By 1973 the building was advertising eight mini-shops under one roof, which is roughly what it still is.
About that sign
The front says one hundred years old. It has said something like that for a long time, and the number moves. Holm's own advertisement in January 1941 said the bar top had gone in some seventy years earlier. Under McCarry it was the hundred-year-old place through the fifties and sixties. A classified in 1973 called it a hundred and twenty. McCarry's obituary hedged that the building was "actually older than its sign proclaimed."
The evidence points away from exaggeration rather than toward it. The fire of July 1891 destroyed downtown Boulder Creek except for a single building at Central and Lomond, and this block sits inside the burn. The Sanborn fire insurance map drawn in June 1892, eleven months later, already shows the block rebuilt as a solid row of wood-frame storefronts with saloons, a general store, a meat market and a bakery. That puts this building in the rebuilding of 1891 and 1892, which would make it closer to a hundred and thirty-five. No assessor record, permit or register listing gives a construction date for this address, so read the 1890s as the best available inference rather than a documented fact. Either way the sign is not bragging. It is behind.
Hours
Daily, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sourced August 5, 2026.
It closes for Easter Sunday and Thanksgiving, and it opens for Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. Phone (831) 217-5060.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Mac's Place?
13164 Highway 9, downtown Boulder Creek. Phone (831) 217-5060.
Who was Mac?
Manus C. McCarry, who bought the bar here in March 1944 and ran it for about twenty-five years. He led the town's St. Patrick's Day parade for more than twenty of them.
What are the hours?
Daily, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., as of August 5, 2026.
Does it have a website?
No. Its Facebook page is the only channel, and that's where new arrivals and closures get posted.
Is it one shop or many vendors?
Many. It's a multi-vendor antique store, so the stock and the pricing vary booth to booth.
Can I buy plants there?
Yes. The Cats' Garden, in the back of the shop, sells plants.
Stock turns over daily, so what's there today may not be there Saturday.
The booths turn over, so what is on the floor this month may be gone by the next visit. For the rest of the row, see the essential shops guide. Spot something here that no longer matches the store? Tell us.
