JP Flea Market: Equal Parts Bread & Circus

Thanks to a window full of flyers at City Feed & Supply, I was led this weekend to the Winter Flea Market at Spontaneous Celebrations in Jamaica Plain.

I’m a sucker for flea markets, yard sales, or any other platform allowing for the trade of junk and ephemera for cash (wait until May when Brimfield Antique Show comes back and I go into weird junk overdrive!). Apparently there’d been a smattering of JP rummage sales over the years, but this was the first I’d heard of before the fact, so I collected a posse and went to check it out.

Spontaneous Celebrations is a strange and interesting place. It physically resembles an abandoned church in a Latin-American movie if that church was overtaken by squatters who really love to paint. Inside, there are two floors. The lower has a few rooms, including a kitchen, while the upper floor is set up like a venue with a performance space and a bar.

But that description doesn’t properly explain the space. Rather, it is building that almost physically transforms to accommodate what’s happening inside it. It can feel like a nightclub or the extra rooms of a public library depending on its occupants. During the flea market, it felt like a kind of dingy, but somehow not unhealthy, warehouse of weird.

The flea market merchants were the eclectic bunch you might expect at a community space in Jamaica Plain. A mixture of hippies, artists, and packrats sold Elvis Presley cardboard stand-ups, feather hair extensions, clothes, and model rockets from NASA missions long forgotten. Everyone was gracious and positive – no hard sells past “I bet you can use that!” when you pick up something there’s no discernible use for or “five dollars!” when you pick up something marked for ten.

In the kitchen on the first floor, a very skinny man with long graying hair and beard was serving homemade food that may have violates an arbitrary health code or two, but was delicious nonetheless. 

Adventuring within the constraints of schedule, finances, and ability

If you've ever talked to me for more than a few minutes, chances are you've heard me go on and on about another place. While I am most notoriously known for jabbering on about my love of Paris, I can be brought to reminisce about the glory of Alaskan nature, the seemingly lawless joys of late night San Francisco, or the proletarian charms of Detroit if the proper situation presents itself. Frequently, this faux-worldliness is perceived as impressive at first glance, though after a few encounters I'd imagine it gets kind of tired.

With this in mind, I have a few admissions to make.

1. I haven't been to that many places. I've done a good number of road trips with bands, friends, and activists over the years, and it has allowed me to see a good number of American cities and towns. These mini-adventures drew me to want to see more places and things, but in reality, I've only left the US twice.

2. One of those two departures was to Canada, which barely counts.

3. I haven't gone anywhere in a long time, and I'm getting a bit itchy about it.

As is the case with most people these days, I'm having trouble justifying the costs of travelling. Or rather, I could justify spending the money if I had it, but I don't have it, so I'm not going anywhere. This lack of adventuring in places foreign or domestic has increasingly led to my becoming bitter with my surroundings. I've become bored with my day-to-day, spending hours dreaming of other places, and even keeping webcam streams of other places open on my desktop just for the change of scenery (see screen capture).

In the past few days, I've thought hard about this markedly first-world problem of not being able to go wherever I want at any given time, and I've decided to try to make some lemonade out of this sour attitude.

Thus the purpose of the blog. I will be striking out in my own back yard, seeking out stuff I've never seen or done right here at home. I'm going to explore neighborhoods I have little or no experience with, patronize places I've never considered going to or ignored because they're "all the way in Dorchester" or "at the end of the Green Line."

I live in Boston, Massachusetts. I've lived here for over 10 years, and I've lived around it my whole life. Like any long-time resident, that's made me pretty complacent with my surroundings. But Boston's still Boston, right? This is one of the most famous cities in the United States. People come here from all over the world. There are people sitting at their jobs in Nebraska and Croatia wishing they could go to places I don't even pay attention to anymore because I see them so much. Folks wait their whole lives to go to places I've been avoiding since 7th grade field trips. There dozens of museums and galleries I've never gone to in the metro area. Boston has a lacrosse team! I don't even know what lacrosse is! Sure, I've been to Chinatown, but I haven't eaten at many of the hole-in-the-wall joints that the locals line up for. And what the hell is on the Blue Line?

The plan is to go somewhere or do something new every week. I'm sure I'll miss a few, but it's a priority not to. Even if it's something small like a restaurant, it feels necessary to seek out the great stuff around here armed with nothing more than a bike, the subway, shoe leather, a camera phone and a couple of bucks at a time.

So why read this? Maybe you'll learn something about the area. Maybe you'll learn what not to do? It's possible you'll even get a laugh out of my ridiculous need to find meaning in my surroundings. Hopefully, it'll make you want to get out of the house and see the awesome stuff that's right outside your door.