Artists and Fleas Indoor Market : Brooklyn
06.28.06By Collin David
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!
