826LA & The Mar Vista Time Travel Mart is a unique and fun shop located in Los Angeles. It offers a variety of quirky gifts and supplies, including BC/AD stickers, mammoth milk, and even time travel sickness pills. The store supports a community education program, providing free tutoring for kids. The shop features interesting items like real tar from the LA Brea Tar Pits and an incubator for hatching dinosaur eggs. Customers appreciate the kind staff and the enjoyable atmosphere, though the store is only open three days a week, unlike the Echo Park location. Visitors find the experience of exploring the shop delightful, with many expressing their intention to return. Additionally, 826LA offers free writing workshops for young people, adding to its community-focused mission. Overall, it’s a magical place that blends creativity, education, and fun.
It’s a destination for a field trip for the 3rd graders at our school
June 2023
Staff has been really wonderful and my daughter really enjoys this community. There is a wonderful supervisor who unfortunately left now they seem to be a little bit more disoriented. Hopefully they'll have another person as wonderful as her coming back.
December 2022
Adorable little shop with a great selection, both silly and practical.
At first glance, the inside of this storefront resembles any other market in the area?but look closer and you?ll find a collection of funny ?time travel? curiosities that one needs in order to visit the past and future. Oddities include Robot Toupees, Aeon Bottled Time (i.e. sand in a bottle), Barbarian Repellent, Primordial Soup In a Can, and a whole bunch of books. What?s going on? The market is a ruse: everything in it is indeed for sale, but the store is actually a front for 826LA, a nonprofit organization which tutors kids ages 6 to 18. Founded by author Dave Eggers, 826LA gives free creative writing classes to kids. All the books in the store? They?re written by those children. Unlike the Echo Park location's convenience mart theme, the Mar Vista outpost has more of a nautical flair.
