Brooklyn Flea

Senor Flea and Mr. B are both avid Brooklyn bikers, and believe you should be too. So we're pretty psyched that a Bushwick gal named KT Higgins will be selling quality used bikes that she's fixed up herself at the Flea. She came up with the name Beaver St. Bikes for her burgeoning bike biz, and having honed her repair skills at the venerable Bike Works on Ridge St. in the city we're confident she's going to be helping many Fleagoers who enter on two feet to leave on two wheels. (She doesn't have a website yet, because she's focused on getting enough bikes ready for opening day.)

KT happens to be friends with a recent Flea addition, artist Taliah Lempert, whose work focuses exclusively on the multifaceted beauty of bicycles (right). You might have checked out Taliah's drawings and T-shirts in DUMBO near Recycle-A-Bicycle, or other fairs around town.

Exciting stuff, kinda makes you want to pop a wheelie.

The Fleasters would be insane not to indulge NYC's stroller derby, and there are quite a few vendors we hope will appeal to the smaller Brooklynites and New Yorkers. (This was also the inspiration behind booking Sharon Jones and Steven Bernstein's Baby Loves Jazz project at the Masonic Temple for opening day, April 6.)

A new local company called Brooklyn Junior screens cute truck, tool, and stoplight prints on the requisite onesies, T's, blankets and bibs, as well as hitting the new mini-kimono trend. Hoosier Magnolia, which comes to us from Boston, does colorful embroidered dinosaurs, butterflies and happy crabs; Two Blue Cars taps Brooklyn artists for boys' clothes with giant bulldozers and the like; and Revolutionary Babywear (right, top) teaches the children well, stenciling images of Frida Kahlo, MLK, and Stephen Hawking onto onesies and T's.

For bigger kids, two top graphic artists will be selling from their personal collections. Amitai Plasse, a freelance artist/designer for international clients, illustrates everything from Abbey Hoffman caricatures (right, bottom) to surreptitious subway sketches. Wesley Gunn is an animator for Nickelodeon by day, and draws everyone from Batman to Bee Movie on his own. He'll be selling his sketchbooks, prints, and more.

Having fed your bellies, flooded your shopping bags, and filled your ears, we figured it would be a logical time to feed your mind too. A Public Space, the esteemed literary journal based in Boerum Hill and founded by former Paris Review editor Brigid Hughes, will be at the Flea every week, making available its five quarterly issues as well as books by writers it likes. Contributors include heavyweights like Jonathan Lethem, Anna Deavere Smith, William Vollman, and Rick Moody, so this is serious stuff. They'll also be giving away copies of Brooklyn is A Public Space, a collection of local scribes' literary ruminations on our fair borough.

The Housing Works crew will also be opening the shelves of its Crosby St. bookstore in Manhattan every week at the Flea (in addition to selling their coveted antiques and furniture), which means even more page-turning to be done. It's not the banks of the Seine (yet), but if we can organize the Sunday-afternoon readings at the Masonic Temple we've been scheming about (sale on reading lamps!), it'll certainly be a moving foreword.

We're assembling a nice little stable of jewelry vendors, balanced between fine vintage and costume pieces and up-and-coming local designers. For a dude like Senor Flea, the process of curating all that glitters is not always gold, so we're eager for feedback on who's onboard so far. The folks at NY Gems and Jewelry in the Diamond District are turning their hobby of collecting vintage costume jewelry into a Flea booth, which we hope will be a big hit. And Bleu Fleur Bead Studio (right) strings together early 20th Century Czech and Venetian glass beads, Chinese jade, and Yemen silver and amber.

The up-and-comers include a slew of Brooklynites like Odette NY (right), Tirana and Carrie Yee (Williamsburg), YOVA Design and Eswera (Park Slope), Melody's Addiction (Crown Heights), Gabriela de la Vega (Fort Greene), and T. Kahres (DUMBO); a snazzy Manhattan maker named Elma Blint; and a guy and two gals traveling from afar: Ryan Kundrat (Connecticut), Angela Martell (from Philly) and Aiko Designs (all the way from San Francisco!).

Brownstoner devotees, home renovators, and salvage junkies alike have kneeled at the altar (or paint-stripped mantel) of Eddie Hibbert, the cornerstone of collectible, well, stuff who's been opening up his trove of treasures at the corner of Greene and Grand Avenue since who knows when. (Señor Flea scored some of his most cherished soul and disco vinyl there in a euphoric rush of dollar Prince, Mary Jane Girls, and SOS Band records a few years back.)

When the Flea was birthed back in December, Eddie was our dream/model vendor: old-school Brooklyn guy, doesn't mind a friendly chat, finds random amazing things that infinitely and magically replenish themselves, provides a serious service that New Yorkers need and increasingly can't get elsewhere. Oh yeah, and fair prices.

Since Eddie is free of modern harnesses like email and a website, it took us awhile to get him onboard, but thanks to Brownstoner's persistence, we're happy to report that we've got him now. (Granting permission for Eddie's sister to sell her homemade cupcakes didn't hurt our chances.)

Fellow antiquers Reclaimed Home, one of the first Flea vendors to sign on, has one of the only online sources of Eddie info, check it out. The Reclaimed folks do really nice work re-purposing salvaged furniture and lighting from their Bed-Stuy homebase, and we're confident they'll become a go-to Flea staple before long too.

No flea is complete without a tasty nosh to fuel your exhaustive shop-a-thon, which is why this week we added our first official Flea food vendor: the lovely Belgian folks from

Wafels and Dinges! Some of you may have sampled M. Wafel's treats at their cute truck around town, including recent weekends on 7th Ave. in Park Slope, and now they'll be at the Flea every Sunday slinging Belgian waffles off their piping iron (plus seasonal beverages like chocolate drink, lemonade, and hot cider) to salivating shoppers.

In case you're wondering, the "Tasty Treats" folks on our vendor list will be selling packaged foods like cookies, granola and toffee within the market, whereas Wafels and Dinges are the first addition to our nascent "Food Court." Is your appetite whet yet?

Not that our awesome vendors aren't enough reason to head to Lafayette and Vanderbilt on April 6 (and every Sunday after that), but why not have more of a good thing? We are proud to announce that the Baby Loves Jazz project featuring Sharon Jones will be performing at the historic Brooklyn Masonic Temple--located directly across Lafayette Ave. from the market--as part of the Flea's grand opening!

Our friends at boomBOOM have been working on presenting bandleader Steven Bernstein and Sharon's Baby Loves Jazz project for awhile now, because their album of funkified kids-music classics is a perfect match for the Flea's groovy family-friendly crowd. (Sharon's longtime band The Dap-Kings pumped the soul into Grammy-winner Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album.) And if you've always wondered what goes on inside that beautiful building, here's your chance to check it out and dance a jig or dosado or whatever that move kids do is called.

Tickets are available now for $15 in advance--half what Sharon's sold-out show at the Beacon Theater cost last weekend.

We're making sure the Flea has plenty of 2.0 layers like top-notch clothing, accessories, and jewelry designers, yummy culinary startups, hula-hoop lessons on opening day (April 6), and possibly Sunday concerts at the historic Masonic Temple across the street. But the heart and soul of the Flea are the vintage-furniture and antiques sellers that have become increasingly hard to find in our town.

So we want to give props to the folks who signed up way back in December, before Daily Candy caught on, and helped lay the Flea foundation: Olde Good Things, Housing Works, Prague Kolektiv (right), Demolition Depot, Build it Green! NYC, Silver Fox, Journey Home, and RePOP.

And we're overjoyed to welcome antiques vendors who are coming onboard after years at markets across the river and beyond, some as recently as last night! Fishbowl Enterprises (veterans of the venerable Broadway-and-Grand flea) specializes in vintage handbags and jewelry (top); Ashley Graj (former Avenue A'er), Jellyroll Vintage (17th St. in Chelsea), Ninaz, Miss Masters Closet, and Re/Dress (a size 14+ women's vintage dealer) all have unique takes on vintage clothes; the longtime W. 25th St. shop Defined Vintage features beautiful China and glassware; Paul DeBeer has Persian rugs galore; and one of our faves, Rico Espinet Antiques, of Rico on Atlantic Ave., who will be unloading 30+ years of his collecting at the Flea every week.

Check out the list so far, because this is just a sampling. What's missing from the list? We'll hunt it down.

For everyone here for the first time after reading Daily Candy this morning, welcome! (We've already had 40 potential vendors sign up and it's only 10:30am.) In case you missed the "Registration/Pricing" link in the upper right corner of this page, to register as a vendor simply click here. You'll then receive an email with more info from Flea Manager Eric Demby--you must respond to this email to begin the process of becoming a vendor.

The Flea thanks you for listening.

We'll highlight some of the Flea's classic antiques/vintage sellers soon, but one of our favorite themes so far is the vendors who take an older item as the starting point for their work. Very "now" in its fusing of customization and sustainability, you need the eye for timeless pieces that vintage "pickers" possess, plus an appreciation for materials and form with potential to become something more.

Jim Malone is a perfect example: his newly launched outfit Counter Evolution NYC transforms old bowling lanes and recycled steel into stylish countertops and other furniture, with the lanes' dots and arrows providing unique design elements. (With many bowling alleys going the way of roller rinks, apparently there's hardwood to "spare.")

Many of the vendors categorized as "new" are actually re-purposers too. The Fort Greene gals launching Nightwood (which will essentially debut at the Flea) maintain tables, chairs, and rugs' vintage feel with a twist (above); Joseph Heidecker, a Long Islander and two-decade vet of the 26th St. fleas, makes his own funky furniture in addition to dealing in Mid-Century Modern (his stuff is in the window of Mxyplyzyk in the West Village now); and Tara McManus of Third Earth Designs puts a psychedelic punch into her retro-futurist clothing.

Wondering what's new at the Flea? Basically, old stuff.