On a recent rainy Sunday, Paul Greenstein greets me and photographer Gary Leonard at his “Den of Antiquity." Despite the weather, music blasts through the open garage door off Glendale. We enter to see a sprawl of gear and machines inside. A car is on a lift.      

"People always walk in and ask me to fix stuff," Greenstein said.  "And I say, ‘No.’  This is mainly for my stuff. "

And it is a lot of stuff:  cars, jukeboxes, motorcycles, telephones, and toys –- most of it old and used like the space.

“It’s hard to know exactly when the building dates from,”  Greenstein said.  “But the beams holding up the roof say Carnegie Steel.”

“And," he added, “Carnegie Steel didn’t become U.S. Steel until 1901.”

Greenstein does such sleuthing routinely in his restoration work.  And he does it with zeal. Greenstein lived in Silver Lake from 1976 to 1993. In the 1990s, he hosted a radio show on Silver Lake’s legendary KBLT, mixing up the early jazz and Western Swing records he collects.

Now he lives in Lincoln Heights.   But he started working at his Echo Park garage about seven years ago. His fascination with old things started early.  At age eight he was collecting uniforms.    

"Then I got into old photographs, when I was ten or eleven,”  he added.  “And things just kept getting bigger.”

Today’s centerpiece is a Czech-built 1941 T 87 Tatra.  Greenstein owns it with his girfriend Dydia DeLyser. The black touring car was voted the top Collectible Car by New York Times readers earlier this year. According to Greenstein,  there are only about 150 Tatras left in the world, and about 12 in North and South America. 

“These are one step below national treasures,” said Greenstein. “When Hitler called for autobahns, this is the car he wanted.”  

Greenstein and DeLyser used their prize money to throw a party at the Blue Star restaurant downtown, where Paul is chef on Saturday mornings. Goulash and a giant Tatra cake were served. A huge neon Tatra logo hangs near the car in the Glendale Boulevard space. Greenstein made that himself. 

Among his other treasures:  A 1951 Seeburg Model B jukebox -- one of three jukeboxes in the shop at the moment – and a Midget Movies machine, for showing news and entertainment reels on 16 millimeter film.

But Greenstein clearly prefers not to single out “cool things” in the shop.   There are simply too many. Reluctantly,  he scans the room for one more prize. Finally, he sits down on a motorbike.

It’s a 1937 Indian Superscout, one of about a half dozen Indians he owns, including one from 1910.  Indian was perhaps the first American company to sell motorcycles. Greenstein bought his 1937 bike for $250 in 1973. 

“Everyone said I was out of my mind,” he said.  “It's worth a lot of money now.”

Greenstein bets there are plenty of other collectors in Echo Park. Long-time Echo Park resident Gary Leonard isn't so sure. 

“Greenstein is an original," noted Leonard.  "His space is one of the city's true museums.”