My #adventures at a Flea Market...
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @JenSquard
Our little(ish) town has a flea market! We had a “swap meet” for awhile, which was sort of just a wannabe flea market. It was pretty trashy with only a few cool booths so it didn’t so much make it. Now we have a new one (things like this just don’t survive well in our town, we’re more of a farmer’s market kind of place), and I’ve heard quite a bit about it, so after a photo shoot while I still had camera glued to face I headed over to check it out.
Yeah, not at all what I expected. I’m not sure what I expected, really, but I’ve seen flea markets on TV and such, so of course I’m the expert...or not. There were about 20 different vendors (I’m gonna go ahead and use that term VERY loosely), and there was quite the variety. Some of them were basically just big yard sales. Seriously, old crap, rusty knives, broken jewelry, dirty everything. And they had even taken the time to put prices on this crazy shit! Some were handmade things, like the one booth that had a thousand snowmen, all handmade, and all creepy. There was a lady selling strange little doggie quasi-sweaters. Other booths were just offering a collection of things that they had obviously bought from somewhere else, like a hispanic dollar store supply store, or a bead warehouse. Here are some of the beauties that were laid out for me:
Apparently these are called Hedge Balls, and have a reputation for repelling spiders and other insects. From what I can tell they are indigenous to Iowa (and as a biologist I can tell you it is not smart to bring other species of plants or animals into their non-native habitat - bad things tend to happen).
I'm thinking about wearing this one to work out in....
I'm thinking they used a blowup doll as the model for the pinata?
This made me laugh so hard I cried!
Cologne bottles that look like cars, duh.
Pretty much sums it up.....
I did find several things that I definitely didn’t expect, like a wedding dress. Or women’s panties sold by the pair by a strange old man. New? Used? Stolen? Who knows? What about the snake in a jar? WTF dood? The room full of half-used paint cans, like interior and exterior house paint, was definitely unexpected (but it was in the Man Cave, and there was some weird shit in there). But my favorite? The full chess set made from cologne bottles. This man inherited a HUGE collection of Avon cologne and perfume “collectibles”. Cars, bullets, coins, mailboxes, footballs, eagles, sparkplugs, frogs, buildings, and people, all turned into brownish cologne bottles. He was totally like the Bubba Gump of Avon collectibles - he started naming all of the things that Avon has made that is now a collectible. He even showed me the catalog. Yikes.
Oh, and you can totally get a massage at the flea market. Um....
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