Stylish Times at The Flea

woah. (shaking head in disbelief) ok. first; thank you to b’stoner and the flea people for loving this borough enough to write obsessive and wonderful posts about most anything over the years. thank you for a flea market that will definitely evolve in a most beautiful way.
finally, yes, there were bikes both weeks, but i need to see more. i’m in the market.

I am a black vendor at the Flea, and find this whole racial discussion to be absurd.

Although I understand the general sentiment behind the idea, I disagree with the poster who suggested that Brownstoner reach out to black neighborhood vendors and offer them a discount in order to have them represent. The rates to rent a space are reasonable, and much less than most markets I’ve done. $100 for a 10×10 space is cheap. Less for a table is even more reasonable.

No one needs to pander or condescend to the black community, we are quite able to pay our own way, just like everyone else. I’m sure when this market is better known, more vendors of all kinds will apply. I would welcome a good African goods seller, with unique pieces, not airport art. The Chelsea Flea had a couple of really good ones last year. Sooner or later, one will be there.

A piece of salvage, a Victorian settee, an antique coat, or even a silk screened onesie is not white, black, yellow or brown. It is what it is, and all kinds of people either want it or not. Vendors just want to sell what we’ve gathered or made. US currency is still green. That’s my favorite color, and why I’m there.

“And as a matilinear descendant of a group at least twice enslaved (once in biblical Egypt and then as Russian serfs into the twentieth century”) – BTW In neither situation were they chattel to be bought and sold away from their families. ANYWAY

We are talking about Brooklyn! You would definitely have my approval to go back to Egypt and/or Russia and complain about either of the two not having diversity in their flea markets.

I’m a multi-decade homeowner in Clinton Hill who has witnessed and participated in plenty of change hereabouts. The notion that any neighborhood belongs by right to any one race or ethnicity for any reason at any time defies history, logic, and evolution. And as a matilinear descendant of a group at least twice enslaved (once in biblical Egypt and then as Russian serfs into the twentieth century), I am pretty tired of the “it used to be ours” argument. Sure it did. And before that it was somebody else’s. And before them, someone else. As recently as the early twentieth century, some of my ancestors lived in rented apartments in completely segregated “communities” conveniently “abandoned” by the wealthy of their cities: the ghettoes of Venice and Minsk. But time moves on, and some of my ancestors managed to get out alive and make it to the US, where they lived in hellhole apartments on the Lower East Side and fought to get their kids a decent education. I can’t go back to Venice or Minsk or the Lower East Side (which I couldn’t afford now even if I wanted to live there), nor would I expect anyone in any of those locations to be sympathetic to a claim of entitlement based on – what? “My ancestors lived here, they were part of the ‘community’ then, so I’m entitled to live here now!” Huh?

Older homeowners who may be selling to newcomers of all colors in Clinton Hill and Fort Greene do so because it’s to their economic advantage, and by free choice. And when I choose to sell, it will be to whoever offers me the best deal, regardless of their color – especially when people of all colors and ethnicities have contributed over many decades to the revitalization of Clinton Hill and Fort Greene.