In a front window are coffee mugs and in a back corner are stacks of decades-old magazines ("IS THE PRESIDENT A WELL MAN TODAY?" blares Liberty magazine's Dec. 13, 1941, cover, under a full-page portrait of FDR). In between are lots and lots — and lots — of other things.
A woefully incomplete list of the merchandise packed into Leipold's Gifts and Antiques in Excelsior would include old and new books, vases, T-shirts, lamp parts and shades (they do repairs), maps — many of Lake Minnetonka — jewelry, doll-house furniture, vintage pamphlets and brochures, post cards, snow globes, old photographs, imported nutcrackers, tablecloths, note pads, ceramic figurines and a 17-year-old cat named Boots, who lives there.
Which is to say that Leipold's is essentially unchanged since Darel and LaVerna Leipold opened the shop in 1971. (Boots wasn't there, of course, but there has always been a resident cat). With its hodgepodge of treasures and oddities, Leipold's (pronounced LY-polds) has for decades remained one of the more idiosyncratic shops in this tiny lakeside city.
"Overwhelming" is how Scott McGinnis, 57, a volunteer for the Excelsior Lake Minnetonka Historical Society, describes the store. "You need to spend at least an hour in there to actually see everything and even then you won't be able to see everything."
The store has always tried to appeal to a wide range of tastes, LaVerna said.
"You can tell when people come in whether they like it or not," she said. Some express fascination with the mass of curiosities. But "some people kind of dismiss it as, 'Ugh, what is all this stuff?'"
"Anything that we stock in this store I'd be proud to have in my house," Darel said, pointing out that even the items holding merchandise — an old wooden Coca-Cola case, for example — have vintage charm.
Constancy in a changing city