Black Friday . . . Why not do Eco Friendly Fremont instead?

Fremont Sunday Market eco-friendly?  Isn't the street usually lined with booths selling colorful imports  heavily loaded with an invisible trail of carbon just like the trinkets found in the Big-Box stores?  Some of it may be, although the fair trade ethic is also an important factor, but the majority of vendors fall into very different categories that offer a variety of local, sustainable products.  Farmers Market, food vendors, artists and crafters all fall well into this field of green. 

Another section in the Market also offers very eco-friendly stuff.  Vintage things, old stuff, mostly manufactured in this country, rescued from the land fill by treasure hunters, brought into the market for a second lifetime of value and utility. You are not going to find the latest electronic fads in our stalls, but for many  holiday gift giving obligations this is a part of the market you will not want to miss. Unique old items, jewelry, books and records, interesting art work,  clothing and nameless curiosities will add something special to gift list.  The fun of the hunt, spending a few hours with friends in a funky, friendly atmosphere.


So, skip the Black Friday scrum, have an extra turkey sandwich and veg out at home for the day, then hit Fremont Market early on Sunday for a much more fun treasure hunt to kick off your end of the year shopping frenzy.

Where Does All This Stuff Come From?

Everything we sell in the Sunday Market has a history. What is the provenance, where did it come from, who owned it before, what kind of life did it have, and how did it end up on the flea market table? Good questions. We love to spin a yarn or two about our stuff, not denying the possibly of engaging in a bit of creative speculation when specific knowledge about an item’s true history is a but thin.

Sometimes shoppers also wonder where we get all this stuff. Different from the provenance questions, this one is often kind of compliment, acknowledging the time and effort it must take to find and display the piles of stuff we have in the market each week. The answer may be a bit more prosaic than the histories we like to spin about our stuff, nevertheless not without interest. Our business* is based on shopping estate sales and thrift shops. The trick isn’t so much where one goes to find this kind of stuff. The real skill the persistent junker** brings to the game is a knack for grabbing the jewels from the piles of junk a split second faster than the next person shopping the same place.

A huge amount of work goes into putting on these weekly shows in Fremont. We cannot take a quick inventory count on Monday morning and call a couple vendors to restock the shelves for next week’s market. While everyone else is going into work at the office every day, we are spread out throughout the entire region hunting for more stuff to sell. In a way, shopping the Sunday Market is like having your own personal shoppers searching through the thrifts and estate sales, diligently hunting for the treasures that will be on display in the upcoming weeks. It takes time and energy, lots of road miles, hours in workshops fixing and cleaning things for presentation. It is fun, even exhilarating at times, but at the end of the day it is like any other job, a combination of hard work and skill with a healthy component of luck always in the mix.

*This is the way we work; other dealers in the market will have their own unique approach to their business.
**Lots of folks in our business think of themselves as “junkers”.

Holiday Shopping Destination

We may have an occasional rain shower at the Fremont Sunday Market this week, but the Hypermarket,  out of the weather in the parking garage will be in full swing as usual.  The Holidays are looming close over the horizon and now is a great time to start hunting for those unique, special treasures that will at so much to your festive times. So come on down, have some fun shopping while enjoying good bargain prices.
Here are a few things we have listed in our on-line store that we will also have in our space Sunday.*
Jewelry:
 Vintage Taxco Orvelo Sterling Cat Pin Eagle Marking 
Vintage Mid Century Modern 1960s Metal Bib Necklace   
Antique Estate 14 kt Gold and Pearl Earrings 
Hundreds of other vintage necklaces, bracelets, pendants, earrings, and rings also on display.  Prices in the booth on Sunday will be discounted from the on-line ads.
Western Boots:
 Dan Post Womens 7 C Western / Cowgirl Boots
 Tony Lama Black Label Camel Hide Woman's 6.5 A Tall Cool 
 Dan Post Inlay Cowboy Boots Woman's Size 6 M 
 Dan Post Woman's 6 C Tall Shaft Elephant Texture Leather 


In addition to the jewelry and boots we also bring art work, studio and art pottery, old photographs, books and other paper items.


*Find our space on the left in Hypermarket, three quarters of the way toward the back of the room. 

Hypermarket!

Every week throughout the entire year, at the corner of 34th and Evanston in Seattle, heart of the historic old Fremont district, an eclectic cast of characters gathers from all parts of the region, transforming the quiet back street into a European Style Market. For a few fleeting hours parked cars and the sounds from boat traffic on the nearby ship-canal give way to color and light, music and laughter, the smells of fresh hot food cooked in tiny street stalls, artists and crafters, jewelry and beads, select imports and a wide variety of vintage treasures; independent vendors trying to make a buck, people milling around, walking dogs and kids, out for a bit of inexpensive weekend entertainment at The Fremont Sunday Market.

Our little side show is in Hypermarket, the parking garage under the Red Door pub off the main street concourse.  We are on the left about three quarters of the way toward the back of the room, the one with colorful backdrop and lots of lighting. We love old costume jewelry, always showing a wide variety of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, lockets, broaches, and pins. You will also find carefully selected footwear; Cowboy boots for women and men, along with a selection Italian and Brazilian made woman’s fashion boots and shoes. Our stock is rounded out with beautiful studio and art pottery, art work, piles of old family photographs, and anything else that strikes our fancy fill out the display. Something unique and different every week.

Come on down and see us on Sunday, or hop on over to our eBay store and see some of our feature items that can be purchased with a quick click, packed and shipped or picked up in our stall in Fremont.

Another look at the Sun

Lucky for me that no one reads these posts, or someone could get the notion that I have been tripping out (to use a phrase from the hippy days) over seeing the sun and moon. Still remember the older generation telling us not to drop LSD for fear we would look at the sun and go blind. Strange how the corners are not crowded with blind old geezers with flowing beards and torn tie died shirts and tin cups begging for alms; "Blinded by the light, need help......Universal Unknown Bless" signs hanging around their necks.

But I am not, didn't look at the sun, (possibly dropped LSD, but I'm not saying), and while staking out a place on the corner with a tin cup may well be in my future, we are still hanging on by our finger tips. Nevertheless, I did see the sun again and want to tell the tail.
Back in the day I spent time (not enough) at sea along the west coast of Washington and Oregon states in a tiny fishing boat, and sometimes on a very special day the sun showed itself just as the western horizon rolled up past its disk, allowing for a momentary look, filtered through thousands of miles of misty atmosphere, protecting the eyes, allowing for a good look at the source of all our life and energy.

These rare moments of clear vision are even more rare here on the beach, but not necessarily impossible. Where we live there is a river valley that opens into the salt chuck in such a way that there are vantage points several miles in from the beach that simulate the view one gets from the deck of a boat at sea. That is, looking out to the west the horizon appears unobstructed, filtered by atmospheric conditions that allow for a direct look into the disk of the sun. Red in the pre sunset moments, clearly visible for several seconds as the horizon moves across its surface.

One breath of time seems much longer because we spend most of our lives prohibited form looking at the sun, then when it is visible in a harmless moment it seems so big and real and wonderful that the three or four seconds seem to be an hour.

So it happened yesterday. On I-5 of all places. Hell, is there any part of life and death that doesn't come down on the interstates these days? Anyway, the time was right and I cruised over the low hills into the Stilliguamish valley just as the sun came out from behind a band of clouds at the horizon and showed her disk for a full three or four seconds. OK, so I mindlessly rolled along the freeway for nearly three hundred feet while looking out the side window at the sun instead of the road ahead. What's the problem with that? I saw the sun.

The disk looks huge. I mean huge compared to the moon, or Saturn or Jupiter or anything one seen out in the black beyond. It is huge and beautiful. Sharply defined edge, just the upper half as the edge of the earth comes up over it as we roll along our path. The strongest impression I get is the size of that thing and how close we are to the light. Any closer and we fry; any further away and we freeze. The other striking thing is the small size of our plaint, clearly visible as the curve of horizon moves up before one's eye, and of course the exceedingly thin film of life supporting stuff on the surface of this otherwise dead rock on which we are riding.

After having such a good look at our star, no it isn't our star, we are a part of its stuff, one cannot help but feel awe at what is going on around here. Wild and beautiful, crazy beyond anyone's imagination.....look around the universe at the way things seem to be in so many places and marval at the benign little corner of things we occupy.

Now the Moon

Once again the vision came while I was driving. This time in the pre-dawn darkness on our way into town for Fremont Sunday Market. Mary Jane was sleeping over on her side of the van, freeway all but deserted at five on a Sunday morning, when something caught my eye off to the east. The moon in crescent phase oriented almost exactly perpendicular to the horizon, still low enough for the magnification effect to slightly distort its apparent size, with Venus showing just below and to its left. That view alone is always beautiful, but the unique feature on this particular morning came from the hazy cloud cover through which the moon's light passed on its way to my eye. Almost like the cliche image of the Christmas star on a dime store holiday card, the light defused into two sharply defined shafts, one extending above and below the disk of the moon, with a second band, not nearly as wide that extended to the east and west. I have seen the loom of moonlight scattered through light clouds before, but always in defuse, amorphous smudges of light. This effect was very different, each shaft of slightly orange moonbeam seemed to have fairly sharp edges along most of their length, gradually fading off to darkness at the ends. Fascinatingly beautiful, the image quickly disappeared behind the next hillside along the east side of the freeway, just south of two twentieth interchange, and by the time the horizon opened a bit a hundred blocks further south most of the effect had vanished. As is the case with most things we encounter in this life, there for a moment then gone forever.



As I have gotten older the tendency to find cosmic meaning in things like the unusual sunrise I wrote about recently, or this spectacular moombeam trip has diminished; or maybe more to the point my interpretation of meaning has changed. Whether one believes in God waving a magic charged hand and casting the cosmos into existence with a zap of heavenly juju, or that all the stuff in which we find ourselves just is, one thing is indisputable. We are stardust. Created in the heart of a super nova, cast out into the cosmos where it managed to swirl together in strange combinations, some of which form self aware beings capable of looking back across the universe at itself. Quite amazing really. Compared to this level of meaning, all the various signs and wonders of my youthful fantasies appear strangely dim.


What does that all have to do with seeing another very unusual light in the sky? Nothing really, except as a way of countering my wife's first question after relating the story, "so what does that mean?" Implying that seeing two once in a lifetime celestial events surely must be a message from the great unknown. To which I say not so much, just lucky to be in a specific place from which the combination of atmospheric conditions and light from sun or moon reflected into my eye at from unique angles. The wonderment in this is quite enough to keep me in awe.

The usual seven AM heavy traffic greeted me as I eased my way out of our side road one morning late in the reluctantly departing winter. A single two lane high way winds its way up the heart of paradise Camano, emptying neighborhoods tucked in back road nooks and crannies along the way, strings of cars that often seeming to fill every inch of the way through the main land village of Stanwood,over the hills and on out to real world I - 5 and beyond. On this particular morning the slow down at the street light in town snaked its way onto the last steep hill leading from the island to the stretch of causeway, bounded by low pastour and wet land that separates our semi-island from the main land of Snohomish County. Edging my way down the hill, bumper to bumper, still fuming from the frustrated words exchanged with my sweetie; she wanted to watch a TV show uninterrupted, I wanted to resolve some silly little issue; I saw something that defies description


The road off the island faces directly east, looking up the Stillaguamish valley, the ridge of Cascade mountains that stand hard on the Puget Sound country to the east clearly visible from lofty Mt. Baker on the north on past Pilchuck and many other peaks, names not familiar to me marching off to the south. On this particular morning something wonderful had happened between atmosphere and light, the entire west facing slops of the mountains appeared elongated and flattened, almost as if the foot hills and mountains were a vertical cliff face, much taller and closer than they really are. I've see this kind of optical illusion at sea, ships several miles distant appearing to stand higher out of the water than their length, but this is the first time I have seen it happen over an expanse of dry land, and the effect on the mountains was much more dramatic than I had ever witnessed on the water. As I got down to the bottom of the hill where the vista suddenly opens further to the south the effect of the mountains magnified even more; lucky the traffic came to a stop at that moment because something caught my eye that transfixed my attention.

The sun. In a cleft of two mountain peaks, black against the brightening morning sky there was a very red rim of brighter light. It was the top of the sun just showing in in the v shaped space between the mountains, easily observable with the unprotected eye due to the very thick atmosphere through which I was looking. How long it takes the disk of the sun to transit the visible horizon, I don't know; but in these wildly distorted conditions it seemed to be several minutes during which the movement of our planet steadily crossed the face of the still very red sun, filling the space between the mountains as it moved before my eyes.

Seeing the actual disk of the sun can be a one time affair, backs of the eyes permanently burned to a useless mass of jelly for the unfortunate sole who attempts the impossible. But on rare occasions the atmosphere will thicken between the where you are and the horizon and a very few minutes of clear observation of our local star can be enjoyed. Usually at sunset on the ocean when a line of clouds blanket most of the western sky, and then suddenly as the sun gets withing a half distance of its apparent circumference from the horizon a thin strip will open and it is possible to look straight into the inferno, seeing half or more of the disk sinking below the rim of the planet as we spin off away from our star. At these times the curved surface on which we are living is clearly visible, giving a better feel for the small size of our home. Seeing it against the back drop of the greatly distorted mountain ridges gave another perspective, how very close we live to this star; almost scary close but then our fragile film of habitable space on this rock could not exist even a hairs width further away, and.....suddenly the light of the sun overcame the atmosphere and I had to quickly look away, just in time to hit the accelerator as the break lights ahead of me twinkled out and off we all went in the mad rush of our lives.