This image is cropped to protect the innocent.
Times change and stay the same. So does the market. This years cruise ship season has begun. Pike Place Market is waking up, the streets of Seattle are filling up and the hub bub is ramping up. I want to start this season off with an updated view of the market - I'm setting the stage here for the adventures, stories and characters to come.There is a major renovation of the market going on. I wonder what the maintenance staff thinks of all this. They've held this market together with bubble gum, spit and duck tape for years. They are part of the "invisibles" that keep the market running.
Pike Place Market : A farmers/artists marketplace on Pike Place and 1st Ave. in downtown Seattle, Washington. Crammed with numerous fish markets (including the most famous where they actually throw the fish when you make a purchase), produce stands, fresh flowers, lunch counters, honey, nuts and then of course the nuts selling art (also referred to as daystallers or crafters) along with 9.5 million visitors who walk through each year. The market is also populated with it's own security force, buskers (those who sing, dance and play instruments on the sidewalk for money), homeless men and women, some of whom sell the "Real Change" newspaper. "REAL CHANGE to help the homeless!" they call out or whisper to passersby. Lumbering delivery trucks, parades of naked bicyclists, Conan O'Brien, William Shatner and others both in and out of disguise.
I saw one of our disguised regulars yesterday. This year he has chosen an anime character look - wasn't he a super hero wrestler last year? Young and old teenagers can be seen coming through the market with chartreuse hair spiked up 2 feet off of their heads, draped in black, head to toe tattoos, Herman Munster boots, 3 inch spiked collars and black lips. If they're looking to get stared at - the market community barely gives them a glance. We've seen the old crone dressed in rags, bare feet, a wooden staff with a live black bird tied into her ratted out hair floating by on a kick scooter. I mean really? Herman Munster boots? That has soooo been done. Visitors to the market, especially those from the mid-west take furtive glances over their shoulders or just stand and stare with open mouths. "Did you see that?" they whisper loudly to each other. Seeking safety in their numbers, they move on, distracted once again by all that there is to see and hear.
CraftLine : Artists set up their sales space along a line of tables set on either side of a 3 block long building with a roof, but walls open to the weather on one side. Concrete floors, metal and concrete tables that hold the cold like a freezer. Each artist is given a 4 foot space on which to set up and sell their wares. I look at us all in wonder. We raise our families, pay our mortgages, put children through school, live our lives the best that we can - in a 4 foot space.
We are a hardy bunch. There are no other more resilient and creative people. Our creativity is not only in the art that we make and sell - it is in the way that we create our "shops". The amount of effort that we go through each day is the same with varying results. Good sales days balance with the bad and somehow we hope that it will turn out "good enough". We all know how to contract, to get smaller. Looking to the produce vendors to put out their $1.00 bags of cabbage and peppers and carrots - we make it through the winter.
The roll call board at the north end of the building is a mass of energy in the morning as we get our space assignment for the day. "What's going on here?" a visitor asks. "Free cheese, Free Meth Clinic, Lottery Drawing..." We cram together. We push and shove, trying to see the board as our names are called. "Gregory!, Kinsey! Mounts!" My name is coming up soon - I push forward "Callan! Allen!" That's me. I call out my spot, push my cart into position and set up for the day. Hope to see you soon.
I love this, Kat!
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