Myles and JoAnna Crebs, owners of the Rich Man Poor Man stores in Cambria and Morro Bay, are celebrating the business’ 50th Anniversary. Photo by Neil Farrell
Fifty years is a long time to be in the antique business. Stay open that long and a store might become an antique itself, like the items on sale inside.
Myles and JoAnna Crebs, who are both retired accountants, don’t seem to mind. Their two locations — Rich Man Poor Man Antique Malls in Cambria and Morro Bay — are going strong, enjoying a rich base of loyal customers and business associates, many who have become friends, and celebrating the business’ 50th anniversary this year.
They both were antique dealers in Visalia in the 1980s and purchased the original Rich Man Poor Man store in Cayucos from the original owner, Barbara Lender, Myles explains, sitting for an interview with JoAnna and a reporter in the Los Osos Starbucks.
The two had moved from Visalia to Cayucos in 1987 and worked for Barbara at the original location in an old building on Ocean Avenue. The building was quirky with three floors including a basement level and wood staircase and a balcony that wrapped around the exterior overlooking the main showroom floor.
“It had a ghost,” JoAnna says, smiling a little. Myles jumps in saying they had psychics come in to investigate and they didn’t stay long.
In 1989 the pair moved to Atlanta, taking a 7-year hiatus from the antiques, and when Barbara was ready to retire and sell, they came back and bought the business in 1999.
“We picked right up with Barbara,” Myles says, “and told her we wanted to buy the store.”
The business model is rightly called an “antique co-op,” Myles explains. They rent space inside the store to people who sell things and they man the register, mind the store and collect the sales, distributing the money back to the vendors.
Some of their vendors do this professionally, meaning it’s their entire livelihoods. “Some have been with us over 20 years,” JoAnna says.
Myles saddens a bit and explains that over the past 26-plus years they’ve had the business, “We’ve lost a lot of wonderful friends. We’ve lost a lot of dealers to death.”
Though they both had lengthy careers as accountants, including working for come big corporations, both have always loved antiques. “He was involved in it before me,” JoAnna says.
Myles recalls, “I was 18 or 19 when a friend took me to an auction. I got the bug then.”
Even when they were in Atlanta, Myles says, he had a little antique shop in Stone Mountain, Ga., “and I still worked full time.”
In 2012, they gave up the lease at the beloved Cayucos store and moved the business to Cambria and into the Redwood Center, a shopping center on Main Street in the East Village (2084 Main St.).
It’s Cambria’s oldest shopping center and sports a variety of small businesses including an electric bike shop, and two cafes. Having the restaurants has meant steady foot traffic for their antique mall. “It’s been wonderful,” Myles says, “having the restaurant next door.”
When they were in Cayucos, JoAnna explains, she always felt they needed to have something for the men who came in with their wives to do. So they set up a “man cave” and put items in there that would be of interest to men. It was so popular they established man caves in the Cambria Store and now also in the Morro Bay location that they opened in April 2024 (located at 2110 Main St.).
“I said, ‘These men need something to do,’” JoAnna explains. So she got vendors who sold tools, knives, records and other manly things, coining the term “Mantiques,” along the way.
In Cambria, “It’s the most popular part of the store,” she laughs.
Myles mentions that they have old Playboy Magazines in there too, laughing at the memory of going in and seeing men get embarrassed when caught with the centerfolds unfolded.
“Women buy as many Playboys as the men do,” JoAnna comments.
Myles points out that antique sales — retail sales in general — take special social skills. “It’s a people business,” he says. “JoAnna is really good with the dealers and the customers.”
“I like everybody,” she says. “It’s a really good trade. I love on everybody.”
He adds that in online comments and in person, people tell him all the time, “You’re the most warm and friendly stores.”
The Morro Bay store, in what was for many years a furniture store, is huge, some 8,000 square feet. They have some great employees who make it all possible for the two of them to keep going, operating two stores in towns 30-plus miles apart and neither of which are in the same town where they live (Los Osos).
JoAnna praised her Morro Bay store helper, Kathleen who was instrumental in pulling together the Morro Bay store and keeps it running.
As one might imagine, having a store for so long, you will run into special, celebrity customers. Both recall their favorite — comedic actor, the late-Jonathan Winters, whom they considered a dear friend.
“Jonathan Winters,” Myles says, “loved JoAnna.”
They laugh recalling a story about the legendary funnyman, who would hilariously work the room at local restaurants, and blurt out that he’d forgotten his wallet and didn’t have any money to pay for his meal. One time a couple he’d been joking around with, actually paid for his meal, JoAnna says, which greatly embarrassed him, but must have been hilarious none the same. That was also the last time he pulled that particular gag on unsuspecting folks.
“He used to say, ‘I forgot my wallet,’” Myles recalls when Winters visited their store. “He’d say, ‘So today I’m just going to shoplift.’”
Joanna laughs, “He never had a wallet.” Winters’ bodyguards used to carry his money, which he needed because he was a collector.
“He collected toys,” she says. “He collected toys because when he went off to World War II, his mom sold all his toys. At his estate sale, there were all these toys.”
Another regular customer was Huell Howser a TV host, producer and personality who made several TV shows for California PBS stations, the most famous of which was California’s Gold.
Howser loved to vacation on the Central Coast, JoAnna says, and came into the Cayucos store every time he was in town.
They’ve been involved with their community too. Myles was the Cayucos Chamber of Commerce president, and the two were instrumental in starting the Cayucos Antique Street Fair, a popular bi-annual event that continues today in May and October.
“That was always fun,” JoAnna says of the Street Fairs. (The next one is set for Sunday, Oct. 18.)
She remembers one exceptional day in March 2011 when a major earthquake off Japan sent a tsunami racing towards California. A tsunami warning got them out of bed early that morning.
Though the warning was for the west side of Ocean Avenue, their store was just across the street and was loaded with valuable jewelry. JoAnna says she woke Myles up at 2 a.m. and said, “We’ve got to get that jewelry.”
Their store was filled with other people’s livelihoods and she was determined to protect what she could. “I had a suitcase full of jewelry and other valuables,” she says.
In the end the tsunami, while it devastated some coastal towns and harbors in California and destroyed a nuclear power plant in Japan, did little damage here.
The store has been in business for so long that they now have second and third generation customers, many who remember coming into the store as little kids with their parents.
They recall one little boy who many years ago came to their store looking for World War II things that he collected. “He’s now 28,” Myles says, “and still comes in, and still collects World War II stuff.”
“Our customers and our dealers are the best,” JoAnna says. “It’s like a family,” Myles adds.
He’s 81 and JoAnna she’s, well let’s just say she’s younger than that, but they don’t see a second retirement on the near horizon.
“We plan to keep on going until the antique dealer in the sky calls us home,” Myles jokes.
Both Rich Man Poor Man stores in Cambria and Morro Bay are open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closing only on Thanksgiving and Christmas, or, laughs Myles, “If the Pittsburgh Steelers are playing in the Super Bowl.”
