No small problem. San Diego’s last store for miniature replicas faces closure

Michael Sue Nanos’s shop in Pacific Beach is stuffed with tiny, wondrous things: pinky-nail sized cereal boxes, tables and chairs fit for a family of pocket mice, and an aptly named little book, “Little Women.”

Now Nanos is facing a big decision: whether, and where, to relocate.

For at least 22 years, Nanos has been an expert in doll houses and other miniatures. She started crafting them as a hobby, then she worked in a miniature hobbyist shop on Cass Street called Ms. Peggie’s Place, named after its first owner, Peggie Devine. Eventually, Nanos bought the place. Other such stores had shut down, making hers the last miniature and doll house supply store in San Diego, Nanos said.

Over the decades, and especially during the pandemic, when more people discovered this hobby, she built a community of friends who share her love of tiny, intricate objects.

She recently learned she has to vacate by Oct. 31. Her landlord is increasing the shop’s rent to $2,500, which Nanos said she cannot pay. The longer term plan, she was told, is for tenants to move out next year so the building can be renovated or sold.

The increase was a long time coming, considering her very low rent.

“That man never increased my rent for 22 years,” she said of her landlord. “I was very blessed. There’s a penalty to pay for that, at the other end, because I don’t even know what it’s like to pay those kind of real rents.” She paused. “I’ve been paying $700 a month.”

She can pay more, but not what is being asked, Nanos said.

Then there is the matter of her health. Nanos needs open-heart surgery. In late August, she was still waiting for the procedure date, which she expects will be this month. With that on the horizon, and an 800-square-foot shop’s worth of miniatures to pack, she doesn’t know when, where or how she will reopen.

For Nanos, 76, the business these days is mostly a passion, not a career path. She turns a profit, given the rent she is paying, and it generates spending money on top of her retirement income.

What hurts: Closing the shop would tear open a void for San Diego’s doll house and miniature crafting community.

One crafter and friend wrote her a note of encouragement. “You are the heart & hands of my & all our dear friends’ ‘miniature’ culture/world. I cherish your smile, sense of humor, the blue of your eyes in laughter & compassion.”

Friends said they are ready to set up a new shop. All she needs is a space.

She has been hoping and praying.

“Well, I keep saying somebody’s got a little shop that grandpa had — a barbershop or something — and he passed 10 years ago, and they haven’t done anything with the building, you know?” she said. “I just keep going, please, please, let me find this little bitty place. Eight hundred square feet is all I need. That’s as big as this is.” A little more space would be nice, she added, but she doesn’t need it.

She’s open to a fixer-upper. “Clean it up, and paint it, and do some repairs,” she said.

Things have a way of working out, she added.

“I don’t want to say I’m real religious, but I do know that I’ve always been taken care of. You know where people talk about having a guardian angel? I think I got two. One on each shoulder.”

Nanos glanced at each shoulder — or angel? — and smiled.

Two lucky starts

Things have worked out, before.

“I started out with a company called Leewards. You know who they are?” Nanos asked.

Some San Diegans might. It was a crafting store founded in the 1940s, which opened location in Clairemont in the early 1970s. Nanos, who was looking for work, walked in and “talked to an old guy in there.”

“Do you know how to use a showcard machine?” the man asked.

“I said, ‘Oh, yeah, no problem.’”

She had no idea what that was.

That “old guy” was the company’s founder. He hired her on the spot.

Later, as the store’s assistant manager, she befriended a customer who turned out to hold the key, literally, to the rest of her career. Ms. Peggie had a miniatures shop in Pacific Beach, and she invited Nanos to work for her. When she retired, she offered to sell the business to Nanos.

“What do you want for it?” Nanos asked. ‘And she said, ‘What do you got?’ “

Nanos made an offer, and her mentor agreed.

“She took every penny I had ever managed to be able to save,” Nanos said. “So it was a big leap of faith, but it panned out. It was fine. I’m very happy. She did me one big, big favor.”

The tug of miniatures

“I always loved little things as a child. I even memorized the book ‘Tom Thumb.’ Memorized it,” Nanos repeated, for emphasis. “I could tell you when I was turning a page.” She paused. “I don’t have a memory like that now.”

Why little things?

“Just ’cause it was little. It was fascinating. The little stuff. I had stuff in scrapbooks, little boxes,” she said.

People get interested in doll houses and miniatures for many reasons, she said. They love dolls, architecture, history, nostalgia, working with their eyes and hands. Mid-century is trending, but Victorian still has a hold.

“You can have what you dream of,” Nanos said. “Or the place where you grew up. Or grandma’s house, which you used to love to visit. It’s very nostalgic.”

Does she have any miniature rooms or houses, at her own home?

“Oh God, yes,” she whispered.

Tamsen Gholson, 67, is the friend who wrote the letter of encouragement. She loves miniatures because they are an engineering feat. Those wee drawers really open and close, those windows slide up and down, the switches turn on actual electric lights.

The hobby gives her an opportunity to problem solve and pursue something, patiently.

“I zero in completely on what I’m doing in front of me, and I do it because I like the challenge,” Gholson said. “When I’m in my zone, it’s a way to relax.”

Last one in town

In the 1970s, Nanos said there were eight such stores in San Diego. Today, Ms. Peggie’s Place is the only one exclusively dedicated to miniature replicas of the physical world, built to scale. There are three similar businesses north, from Orange County to Santa Barbara, she said.

A handful more are scattered across the state, an internet search found, including in Torrance, Roseville and Sacramento. Ebay and Etsy are e-commerce alternatives.

Online shopping makes it easy to hunt for that dime-sized fill-in-the-blank for your doll house or diorama. But online, people can’t get the workshops Nanos teaches or ask her advice about which scale to choose. They can’t run into friends or newcomers in a cozy shop with a tree-shaded porch.

Gholson said Ms. Peggie’s Place is not a building, but a community.

“This is a safe haven for people to come and just, like, shut off the world, and just be in a place where they can create, and talk, and share stories,” she said.

As she said that, three people walked in: a woman with her mother and her daughter. The child chose a few tiny books, including “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”

“They’re such cute books,” Susie Hickey, her mother, said.

It was their first time in the store. Hickey glanced at her daughter’s trove, then at the store’s dense, minuscule universe.

“It’s super cute,” Hickey said. “Such amazing things.”