Adams Avenue in San Diego’s Normal Heights neighborhood was once known locally as Antique Row, lined with shop after shop of secondhand furniture and collectibles. Most of those stores have since closed or moved on, and Zac’s Attic, at 2922 Adams Avenue, is now the last one still standing on that stretch, a distinction confirmed by both local vintage guides and a San Diego Union-Tribune feature on the corridor’s shrinking antique scene. Owner Dave McPheeters has run the shop for more than three decades, filling it with a dense, colorful mix of Hawaiian shirts, tiki decor, retro collectibles, records, and other secondhand finds that reviewers describe as packed floor to ceiling with things to dig through. The shop keeps a limited schedule, open only Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., which makes a weekend stop something of a planned event rather than a casual drop in.
That weekend only rhythm is part of what gives Zac’s Attic its reputation among regulars. Rather than functioning as a polished, curated boutique, it reads more like an actual attic that grew into a storefront, with tightly packed shelves and cases that reward patient browsing over quick scanning. Longtime customers on neighborhood platforms describe McPheeters as knowledgeable and easy to talk to about the history behind individual pieces, the kind of relationship that develops after thirty plus years of running the same shop on the same block. Local business groups and vintage minded social accounts have continued to spotlight the store precisely because it represents a piece of Adams Avenue history that has not disappeared along with the rest of the antique district.
The shop’s tiki and Hawaiiana leanings give it a specific identity within San Diego’s secondhand scene, distinct from general antique malls or estate sale liquidators. Shoppers looking for mid-century barware, aloha shirts, hula figurines, or other tropical kitsch tend to find Zac’s Attic mentioned first when the topic comes up locally, and the shop’s survival as the sole holdout on a once thriving antique row has itself become part of its appeal, a small piece of continuity in a rapidly changing commercial strip. Online reviews put the shop at a solid rating in the mid three star range across dozens of write ups, with the price range noted as moderate to a bit higher for standout pieces, a fair trade off reviewers say for the density and originality of what’s on the shelves.
Sitting near the border of Normal Heights and Kensington, two of San Diego’s older, architecturally distinct neighborhoods, Zac’s Attic benefits from a steady flow of foot traffic from nearby coffee shops, restaurants, and boutiques that have kept Adams Avenue a walkable destination even as the antique trade there has thinned out. Local business associations covering the corridor have used the shop as an example of what’s old is cooler than ever, framing it as proof that Adams Avenue’s vintage identity persists in miniature even after most of its neighboring antique dealers closed their doors.
For collectors and casual browsers alike, a visit to Zac’s Attic means timing a trip to the weekend and setting aside time to dig, since the reward is less about a curated showroom and more about the thrill of finding something unexpected packed among decades of accumulated stock. Zac’s Attic is a Normal Heights vintage and collectibles shop on Adams Avenue in San Diego, open weekends only, known as the last surviving store on the neighborhood’s former Antique Row and for its deep well of tiki and Hawaiiana finds.
