After a weekend surrounded by high priced high fashion and high priced ‘Affordable Art’, I needed a low-priced respite. I needed to be among real people, real artisans, and real things I could afford. I’m a man in love with all extremes - I’ll chase my filet mignon with a bag of Cheetos, and I’ll relish both experiences.

New York City had chosen the weekend of June 14th to somehow exchange climates with the muggiest depths of Hell itself, so while Brooklyn’s Renegade Craft Fair was an awesome delight, the weather made viscous slugs of us all, sleepily oozing our way around the abandoned and emptied McCarren Park Pool. For such a vast collection of DIY-ers, recyclers, and use-every-part-ers, holding the Fair in an unused pool was an exceptional and clever use of space.

When I attended Renegade 2 years ago, I was charmed by the handmade feel of everything. Magazines and comics were stapled together, many cloth things had visible stitching, and loose ends were the norm. Signs were handpainted. It was an aesthetic that I learned to love, and even embraced in my own works - the hands deliver the heart and soul, as imperfect as they may be. It’s not that this year’s collection of vendors were off-putting, but there’s definitely a climate change in the crafting scene, if Renegade is any evidence. Gone were many of the smartly recycled items from the past - old books and scraps of wood and LPs turned into new things - and replaced by glossy, printed signs for many of the vendors, and mini-mass-produced items at almost every table.

What I’ve always loved about the young crafting scene is that you could look around, get some ideas, and with a little bit of ingenuity, make something similar to what you’ve seen - but with your own flair. It’s that kind of open source crafting that really builds the community into something strong. Pressing prints on your own small printing press is a completely different entity than sending them out to be digitally, professionally replicated, and while I can appreciate and see the merits of both things, the latter seems to be less in the spirit of a ‘Craft Fair’. It makes the process inaccessible, and even worse, costly. No, you can’t do it yourself anymore, and there’s no smart acronym for whatever the opposite of DIY is.

And maybe it’s the cost of living going berserk everywhere, but prices seemed to be twice as much as what they were 2 years ago. Crafters are finding it harder to survive while doing their art, and the cost of materials has also gone up. None of this is to say that any of the artists there were anything less than inspiring - I fell in love with everything, no matter where it came from - carefully-sewn, cartoonish trophy heads, a whole array of great t-shirts and art prints, squid things and robots everywhere, adorable dolls and crocheted monsters that I would have loved to take home with me, were it not for premium costs.

Still, in the true spirit of Do-It-Yourself, there was one girl set up in a tall, vending machine-shaped tent, advertised as a ‘Postcard Machine’. Insert $2 and you’d get a postcard fed back out to you - which would be drawn on the spot by the artist hidden inside of the mini-tent. Somehow, the entire heart and soul of the Fair were inside of that ‘device’ - everything that I loved form previous experiences, which felt absent from this year. An inexpensive, precious item, made by hand, accompanied by a personal experience - isn’t that at the core of crafting?

The heat made the day a sweaty blur, and while I was hesitant to touch too many things lest I leave a moist handprint on them, I felt the need to support my fellow creators. I purchased a small, felt squid doll-thing (which is holding a tray of sushi) for $19 from Cleo Dee, and a set of 10 ‘Presidential Facial Hair Hall of Fame’ buttons to add to my button collection. Plus, I secretly love Presidential trivia, not to mention how funny they looked, and my affection for the World Beard and Moustache Championships. The set of 10 was $20, and even though I own a button maker, I felt the moral need to perpetuate the crafting scene with my wallet. 1” buttons for $2 each, however, is just the climate of things. I miss the 4-for-a-dollar days. Man, I stocked up that year. So, after $40 spent, the rewards were in quality, not quantity.

Nonetheless, I won’t concern myself with having a pocket full of small bills next year, since everything cost over 20 dollars anyhow. I WILL be returning, of course - even the intense heat couldn’t keep me away from such a gathering of pale, dark-haired crafty girls. Oh, and they neat stuff they make.

Recently, with my aspirations to relocate to a new apartment, I’ve taken to looking at things in a much more practical, decorative sense than usual. Tag sales now yield clever storage solutions and beautiful soup bowls, instead of just the occasional Ninja Turtle missing an arm or zither-centric LP that would previously catch my eye.

Inasmuch, comic books have now taken on a second meaning for me - not only are they literature of the highest caliber, but they’re decorative utilities. They’re the new coffee table book for the pop-culturally aware… and they’ll probably look great in a rack above the toilet. And also, you know, provide an endless array of essential & disposable reading material. For this purpose, I’ve taken to buying random lots of comics wherever I go, from dollar stores to cheap mystery sacks on eBay - almost all of them from the Bronze Age and early Modern Age of comics. Browsing through these, I came across an ad for a comic character I’d never heard of before : ‘Mazing Man.

Normally, I’m not suckered into the whole cute, comedic, goofy comic thing, but being a fan of Stephen DeStephano’s work in Bizarro Comics and Venture Brothers, I quickly bolted to eBay and quickly found a set of the twelve-issue miniseries. Like Flex Mentallo and other odd miniseries before it, this saw little chance of being reprinted in a trade format, and it’s this kind of potentially-lost comic that always fascinates me. The superhero purists would have probably ignored it at the time.

One has to understand that, historically, DC Comics is known for their epic, iconic, intergalactic, super-powered struggles between goods and evils of ostensibly unlimited powers. Marvel Comics often took a more human approach, giving the superheroes very human problems, and often dealing with the dichotomy of being both ‘super’ and needing to maintain a ‘normal’ life. While this trend between the two major labels is not an absolute in any way, ‘Mazing Man is a good example of DC Comics uncharacteristically bringing their storytelling down to a street-level, giving us a human-like universe with regular struggles.

A guy gets writers block. Another guy has his car stolen. A couple gets into an argument. It all happens in Brooklyn in the 1980s. And through it all is ‘Mazing Man, a crazy little guy with a case of terminal optimism and a desire to do everything in his limited power to help all those in need. Dressed as a superhero of sorts (in a helmet that mocks Marvel Comics’ all-powerful Galactus and mimics DC Comics’ own resident warlord, Orion), ‘Mazing Man is a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, both admired and treated with cautious indifference, which he remains completely oblivious to. In the mind of ‘Mazing Man, helping an old lady cross a street is paramount to saving the world from imminent destruction.

I’d originally thought that this would be a book for kids, given the slapstick nature of the covers alone (and the whole talking dog aspect), but the subject matter is definitely geared towards a more mature age group (such as Brenda’s unwillingness to ‘sleep her way to the top’). In fact, it would seem that DC was supportive enough of the storytelling in this series that they allowed an issue to be published without the omnipresent ‘Comics Code Authority’ stamp on the front, simply because the comic made a brief mention of zombies. The CCA, at the time, disapproved of all manner of things regularly seen in comics today, from ‘the undead’, including vampires, to ‘toiletry products of questionable nature’. Zombies, when portrayed in comics, needed to have the proper ‘literary background’ to be permissible. Those zombies needed Masters degrees to be acceptable.

DeStephano’s work, while he was drawing ‘Mazing Man, is still in its awkward (but always kinetic and comedic) phases, as this was one of the first professional books he’d worked on. Each issue contains two or three short stories relating to ‘Mazing Man and his circle of friends, delivered often in an episodic, sitcom-like fashion. And despite this eclectic delivery and unusual nature, it’s well-regarded by comic book fans… even if many haven’t heard of it. Snag a set on eBay and prepare for a Sunday afternoon of positive energy and light reading.

On the way out of the Renegade Craft Fair last weekend and in search of a local sushi place in Williamsburg, my traveling companion and I were handed a flier. Given the fact that I have a tendency to politely take everything that’s ever been handed to me, from religious tracts to death threats (often hard to tell apart), and attracted to the words ‘flea market’ like a moth to a dusty, grimy old flame, we decided to take a stop in.

Located at 129 North 6th Street (not far from McCaren Park and close to the L Train), the Artists and Fleas market takes place in a stylishly graphitti’d unfinished warehouse, albeit a small one, wedged tightly between other structures. It’s one of those charming places at which various goods occupy every square inch of the grey, broken floor. At the entrance, on the day when we attended, a vinyl record vendor was spinning two turntables and seamlessly DJing the event, fading between Talking Heads albums and Michael Jackson, all in between sales.

Beside him, a thick-accented jewelry vendor selling handmade pieces that incorporated petrified wood and fleur-de-lis designs, and beyond that, shelves upon shelves of popular, rather recent books for sale.

Now, being a library employee, I see my share of donated books, and perhaps my brain glosses over them as sellable items. They come from all walks of life, all genres, and all conditions, including those choice paperbacks that have ballooned up irreparably after significant water damage. Somehow, people think that we want those. Of course, such junk is also intermingled with copies of signed Ayn Rand books, so there’s a fair balance.

At my library, most books are sold by the bagful for a price of five dollars. Whatever you can fit into the bag, you can keep for a flat fee, and as an employee, one usually gets dibs on whatever finds its way inside. At this flea market, the price of five dollars for a paperback and some obscene price for a hardcover, I steered clear. I know my bargains and tread carefully should anyone be asking more than two dollars for any given book. Your local library will also probably get a plethora of donations. Go on in and ask them about their book sales!

The vinyl vendor had me hooked, though. Arranged in 25 or 30 milk crates by category, from ‘jazz fusion’ to ‘rock’, ‘new wave’ to ‘really expensive’, there was a fair selection for everyone. Nothing had price tags, so one is at the mercy of the vendor. He’d take your prospective purchases in hand, look at each of them for about a solid minute, and come back to you (after the long, awkward silence during which you pretend to be suddenly really interested in the ceiling) with a price between two and fifteen dollars, though usually on the lower end of things.

I emerged from the warehouse with an English Beat record that skips horribly, even though it appeared to be fairly pristine. I haven’t yet developed an eye to detect microscopic imperfections in the surfaces of vinyl, but I’ll be sure to work on it after spending three dollars on an unlistenable disc. I also perused the ‘spoken word’ section and found a 2-album set entitled ‘You Don’t Have to get Pregnant’, complete with a full-color illustrated pamphlet. Being a fan of spoken-word records, as most of their sounds have never found their way into the digital age, I had to bring it home with me, both to share with friends and incorporate into art somehow. Round that off with two albums of guitar music and a German release of some Josephine Baker classics, none of which have any significant skipping, and I was the hippest hipster to walk through Grand Central Station. Goatee, LPs under my arm and a satchel covered with fancy pins, I was untouchable.

So, if you’re in the area of Williamsburg, check out the rotating collection of artists and hip vendors at the Artists and Fleas Market, every Sunday from noon until 7 PM, just one of many secret treasure troves that I’ll be sure to ferret out over time and travel. And for the record, we found our sushi at a little place called Samurai right off of Bedford Avenue, and I think it’s likely some of the best sushi I’ve ever had. It takes a brave chef to incorporate jalapenos into a maki, but this guy nailed it. So, make a day of it!

Though largely overcast and humid, this past weekend’s Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park was an enormously pleasant event. Gathering creatives and crafting personalities from all over the East Coast and regions beyond, every one of the few hundred small tents that encircled the walkway along the main park area had wonderful, handmade, exciting things to share.

I came to learn of the Renegade Craft Fair though a long series of coincidences and friendships with other creative types. I’d been planning an outing to this, the second annual New York fair, for months, immersing myself in the world of handmade and recycled objects, and making some objects of my own. With a long-standing fascination with ephemera and the power of the human hand when laid to raw materials, it felt like I was finally among my people. Sure, about 97% of the Fair was cute, creative young women, but it had merits beyond that. You know, when I remembered that there were crafts there too, and not just long skirts and piercings. You might think that ‘crafting’ inspires images of seniors assembling quilts or prepackaged AC Moore schlock, but this was a young, terminally hip crowd. To the left here, you can see the wonderful miss Jenny Harada, politely posing for one of my photographs, and wearing one of her monolithic creations.

Dominant items at the fair included cute hand-sewn plush creatures, handbags, stylish wrist-cuffs with various designs and embellishments, small pins and plenty of raw materials to make your own wonderful crafts. As a self-perpetuating community, the whole atmosphere was very friendly and casual, encouraging the creation of more and more unique THINGS, never a fear that another vendor might be usurping another business with similar items. The appreciation that every single item was lovingly created was far more dominant, and while the prices on many of these items were slightly high, I’m always compelled to spend a few extra bucks on small record labels and independent creators and anyone who puts their heart into their works.

I ended up purchasing a small polar fleece octopus within about five minutes, which cost twenty dollars, from Fish Cakes. Secretly, in the back of mind, I’d vowed to find something cehpalopodic in order to quench my well-known cephalophelia, and this was it. Later, I’d find some expertly crocheted octopi at another booth, as well as small tiles painted with octopi at another, and be forced to restrain myself. Also making an appearance were plush robots and other various robot-themed works, including a hilarious little ‘zine called ‘Young and Mechanical’, a clever parody of the genre of teen-centric magazines that litter the racks near the checkout line at any given supermarket.

Speaking of ‘zines, I also picked up a Richard Pryor Coloring Book by Erica Waldorf for three dollars. While awkwardly drawn and thoroughly ridiculous, I was won over by a scene of Superman saving Mr. Pryor from some unseen danger. I’d like to venture that the Man of Steel was trying to save Mr. Pryor from himself. My purchases were mostly small 1” buttons to add to my growing collection on my multi-purpose satchel (or, if you’re a jerk, my man-purse), two significant purchases being from a 25-cent gumball machine filled completely with small treasure eggs, each with a unique, one-of-a-kind button inside. The machine, re-purposed by a young male crafter, proudly advertised ‘COLLECT ALL 20,000!’, which was pretty much a siren song to a collector such as myself. After inserting a quarter, I turned the crank and got a button which illustrated ‘cocaine’. Luckily, my second mystery pull was a button of a brain. Clearly, the two were meant to be together, a perfect combination of self-destruction. You can guess which one I’ll not be wearing to work. Oh, and for the ladies at work, librarians all, I picked up some small ‘I read banned books’ pins.

The Renegade Craft Fair website tells the story of two women who single-handedly pulled together a large community of crafters into events both in New York and Chicago, further revealing a huge network of craft fairs that take place across the United States, attracting all kinds of people who enjoy getting their hands dirty and making fine objets d’art. This network is further revealed within the many connections on MySpace between crafters trading, collaborating on and promoting their wares, and the list of hundreds of websites that Renegade presents on their event map. The Chicago event will take place in September, if you’re in the area.

So, a subculture is revealed, and for me, it’s an exciting and inspiring one. When you think of crafts, please don’t think of log cabins made out of popsicle sticks or country-chic wooden placards with gingham paint schemes and outsider-art angels declaring ‘Home Sweet Home’. Think of fine art redefined and made accessible, because the line is thinning, and it’s a thrilling one to walk.