Brooklyn Flea

Maybe you heard that the much-anticipated Greene Hill Food Co-op recently signed the lease for its Putnam Ave. location. It's big food news for our neck of the woods. Wanna sign up and/or learn more? Stop by the Co-op's info table outside the Lafayette Ave. entrance this Saturday and next (9/25 + 10/2) and chat about how you can cooperate.

Good items this week, ergo good winners.

Check back at noon Friday for this week's items.

From left (click to enlarge):

Saturday: May Ling (right) was on vacation from jolly England (Balham in South London to be precise), where she's a business analyst and vortex healer (!) all in one. She spotted the print of four brownstones, which perhaps reminded her of the splendid rowhouses back home. No matter, we're just glad she crosses the pond with a slice o'Brooklyn. Tally ho!

She's with friendly Claudia Pearson (middle), a Clinton Hill illustrator—originally from London fancy that!—whose playful, global style festoons everything from tea towels to calendars to prints to totes. We love her seasons series, her Buy Local coloring book, and the Tribal Alphabet book she illustrated last year. Her Etsy shop is the best place to see her work online. Find Claudia and her snazzy booth in V5 pretty much every Saturday.

Sunday: Jack Fagan (right), well, we know he won the Scavenger Hunt and that's about it. He rocks a nice b-boy stance, and a nice B-Boy point as well. He snagged the Beasties' "Intergalactic" 12" around 2pm.

He's with Moosaka the Eggplant Boy Wonder, general manager of legendary Chung King Studios by day (check the logo-bite T), devoted cat-lover, DJ, record fiend, and technical whiz, and, yes, brother of Senor Flea for life. He rocked the Fort Greene backstop selling records in '08, helped get the Flea sonically off the ground that year, including the first record fair, and hooked up the fair sound system yesterday. Word-life.

What do you think: Should we do a record fair twice a year starting in 2011?

Records, monsters, and glasses, o my!

We loved Amy Ryan's character in The Wire—classic Season 2 sleeper character—so we were excited to see her at the Flea a couple weeks ago, being trailed by a photographer and reporter. Lo and behold, a story following her from her Manhattan pad to Fort Greene (on the Q train no less) appeared in the Times Sunday Styles yesterday. It's cute: She shopped at Domsey's 20 years ago, loves Red Hook Lobster Pound's rolls (who doesn't), is confused for a little girl's mom (classic Flea), admires a silkscreen bib, and generally seems like a regular shopper. Unclear if she bought anything besides the lobster roll. Which is fine.

Senor Flea is participating in a cool "Community Makers" neighborhood panel on Wednesday, along with (predictably?) a slew of Flea vendors. We think it might be interesting for you.

We're honored to be in the company of such groovy companies: Alive Structures (Marni Majorelle), Blue Marble Ice Cream (Alexis Miesen), Brooklyn Grange (Ben Flanner), and Crop to Cup Coffee (Taylor Mork). We'll be chatting about the various roles community plays in growing independent businesses, from mutual inspiration and collaboration among each other, to the benefits of participating in, supporting, and engaging with their neighborhoods. Good stuff.

The panel is presented by Sheepless.org, who describe themselves as "a media platform created by and for artists, entrepreneurs, foodies, and environmentalists. We champion the Community Makers—small businesses who make our communities more sustainable, more accessible, more creative, and more fun." Sheepless Director Scott Ballum is moderating the panel.

Wed., Sept. 22, 7:30pm

Greenlight Bookstore, 686 Fulton St. (at S. Portland Ave.), Fort Greene

FREE

This Sunday our third annual Superstar DJ Record Fair brings together 30+ DJs, dealers, and local music paragons downstairs in the Vault at Skylight One Hanson, selling vinyl, CDs, Mudd Club paraphernalia, Sex Pistols tour posters, rare rock bootlegs, and collectible records and instruments.

The eclectic vendor lineup includes local DJs such as John Selway, Cowboy Mark, and Raspberry Jones, The Atlantic contributor Hua Hsu, mainstay shops Halcyon and Other Music, top music mag Wax Poetics, legendary out-jazz label ESP-Disk, local hogs EAT Records and Record Grouch, a diverse array of longtime collectors, and record-related stuff like WrecordsByMonkey's melted-vinyl bracelets and Welles + Graham's composer flasks and LP collages.

In addition to selling their wares, each vendor will have a chance to play Buy That Tune!, where they will DJ for 20 minutes, with each record they spin available for purchase on the spot. This has been great fun in years past. Buy That Tune! starts around noon, and the Record Fair is the same hours as the regular Flea, 10am-5pm. It's free of course.

Come on down!

It's a rad print on Saturday, and a vintage record Sunday, which will be hidden somewhere among the 30+ vendors downstairs in the Vault at the Superstar DJ Record Fair.

Note: The Fort Greene market happens every Saturday outdoors; One Hanson is on Sundays indoors on 3 floors. Both are open 10am-5pm.

When you find one of the items above, which can be hidden in any vendor booth, it's yours, absolutely free! Then we post your photo with the generous vendor here on the blog on Monday. Only one winner per calendar month. Items posted every Friday around Noon.

From left (click to enlarge):

1. Saturday: Brooklyn brownstones print, 12"x9". New/Handmade

2. Sunday: Beastie Boys "Intergalactic" 12" single, 1998. Vintage

Our pals at Brooklyn Farmacy, the soda fountain and local-foody shop on Henry St. in Carroll Gardens, fixed up this awesome old egg cream cart (which were everywhere in the "old days" apparently) and are giving it a grand kickoff at the Flea starting this Saturday. Yeah, we're eggcited. Jovial Peter and his crew of (soda) jerks will be serving up cold, fresh egg creams and cherry lime rickeys, using Hudson Valley Fresh milk, Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup, and P+H lime syrup, and serving the egg creams with a pretzel stick the classic way. Look for 'em in the prepared-food area, near the pickles/cheese/sweets.

Monkey, the human behind WrecordsByMonkey, has been stepping it up lately. On Saturdays he's added small plants, clocks, and these cool silkscreened prints on wood in Eastern-style patterns to his usual repertoire of bracelets, pendants, and other items made from recycled record vinyl.

This weekend he's adding a new twist called Build Your Block, a line of five pillows (left) inspired by the delis, brownstones, and abandoned buildings Monkey walks past every day in his Brooklyn neighborhood. The idea is you can recreate a typical Brooklyn street on your couch, bed, etc. We think it's cute.

Plus! Monkey is so bananas for the Superstar DJ Record Fair—vinyl is his lifeblood after all—that he created 10 special pins (right) for the Flea to give away in the Vault this Sunday. (We'll figure out a trivia contest or play name that tune or something.) What a nice monkey!

Larry and wife Dawn run The Vortex, a classic thrift/ephemera/paraphernalia/dusty record/stuff shop on Montrose Ave. in Bushwick. It was in the East Village for 20 years before that. They're Flea fixtures every weekend since 2008 (L7 in Fort Greene, G-35 at 1H). They are archetypal vendors in nearly every way.

Including the fact that Larry likes to don a gorilla suit at the shop from time to time and act like a madman, which he basically is even outside the suit. The Vortex is trying really hard to have their little fiefdom of forgotten fabulousness turn into a TV show called "Larry Da Junkman." The YouTube videos they've made so far make us think it would be a way cooler version of "Pawn Stars." For instance the gorilla-suit clip below. Agree?