Collections is a series from The Show devoted to the things we acquire and treasure.
Kayla Long and E.P. Bradley are collectors — and not just of one thing.
The walls of their central Phoenix home are covered in paintings, trinkets and other artsy odds and ends.
KAYLA LONG: I might have a slight hoarding problem. If I find cool things, I buy it. Like those clowns right there that’s just a bunch of old vintage clowns glued onto a piece of glass.
BRADLEY: Well explain that.
LONG: That's a Tibetan cowbell that I got a store
BRADLEY: Explain the 17th century birthing chair in the corner
LONG: Oh yeah, that's an antique birthing chair with a pigeon on it.
If you look closely at the eclectic collection, which includes Lucha libre art and knickknacks, fake food attached to the wall and various themed clocks, one recurring theme dominates: Pigeons.
There aren’t any live pigeons inside, but there’s just about every depiction of the bird that you can imagine, from plushies to faux stained glass to painted portraits.
Bradley opened King Pigeon Thrift & Vintage in Phoenix last October, but the couple’s love of the bird started long before the shop opened, when Long had an encounter with one a few years ago.
Full conversation
LONG: I was outside late at night after coming home from a bar, so I had had a couple of drinks. So it was like one o'clock in the morning and I just hear this awful sound because we also have feral cats that we take care of. So we're the Central Phoenix Zoo.
One of the feral cats got a pigeon and it was fighting, and I went over and picked it up and I just was like, “OK, I need to like care for this pigeon.” So I brought it into our bathtub and I googled what pigeons eat and found some frozen peas and some water and took care of it.
And that was Burt Murray, and that was the very first pigeon that we ever got.
E.P. BRADLEY: I woke up to a sign on the bathroom saying, “there is a live pigeon in the bathtub.” That’s all it said. Yeah, OK, live pigeon in the bathtub. Cool, cool, this is what we're doing this morning.
LONG: Pigeons are really smart animals, and maybe Burt Murray like had a girlfriend or something and was like, “Hey, this house is kind of cool. We should go check it out.”
And it's like if you give a mouse a cookie. I think the pigeons just kind of communicated and were like, “there's this crazy lady with really big hair and lots of stuff in her yard. She'll feed you.
BRADLEY: And if you're sick, we'll go online and figure out pigeon antibiotics and order it. That has happened. That has happened in our lives.
LONG: So we have Bramble. Bramble's the one with the messed up feet. He always has like a scowl on his face.
BRODIE: What's the one with the legs?
LONG: That's Heidi Plume. So we have Heidi Plum, who's got the longest pigeon legs I've ever seen in my life, and they're also covered with down feathers, which a lot of pigeons just have the scaly, like scaly legs.
Heidi Plume has very gorgeous gams for a pigeon and she's super sweet.
We have Night Light, and he's named Night Light because he's really fat and he likes to post up on our outside light that has a photo cell on it, but because he's so fat when he sleeps on it, it turns on. So it'll be like 9 o'clock in the morning and the outside light will be on because Night Light is on it.
BRADLEY: We have Prince who's purple.
LONG: I have Timothy that's been around for 3 years, that lands on my feet, eats out of my hand, is super cool and super docile. He's missing a toe, he's mostly black.
I say he or she or they, because you don't, it's very hard to sex pigeons, so I don't know specifically.
They know that they're safe here and that they're loved here and that they'll get fed here and taken care of.
BRADLEY: I'd say at the high point, usually we've got about 30 to 35 hanging around the place in the morning.
LONG: Our friends ask about the pigeons like when we go out or if we run into somebody we haven't seen in a while, they'll be like, “How are the pigeons?”
I update on my social media all the time, updates on them. It's probably my most interactive post that I ever post. People ask me questions about them, so people started giving pigeon stuff as gifts.
BRADLEY: Tons of them everywhere you look.
LONG: This is a little Etsy gift that somebody gave and it's just a little 3D printed pigeon that's super fun.
This guy, and there's a bunch of these around the house, but these are little wind up pigeon toys that I'm obsessed with. That was an ornament that now just lives on our TV.
After our very first pigeon, E.P. painted that for me, and that's just a bird painting. This one's probably my favorite: my friend Jasmine got that for me while she was on vacation and thought of me and got me a pigeon painting that somebody made that I absolutely love.
This is right in front of our toilet, and it's a pigeon reading a book on a toilet that says pooping on people. That one's super fun.
We got more out here. We're on our pigeon blanket that has pigeons on it. Some weird tin painting or art piece that is just a giant pigeon looking at someone, a pigeon way sign, another pigeon little piece of tin art.
Stuffed pigeon, another stuffed pigeon, like they're just kind of all over the place. There's another wind up toy pigeon. There's another one over there.
There's lots of little bits and pieces of pigeon gifts and pigeon art that we've received over the years.
The coolest part of it is the actual pigeons themselves.
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