novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- happy mother's day I'm only going to get what I really like. What I feel I can't pass up. There are so many flea markets, and I only go to one or two every few months, but they're an integral part of my life right now, especially when I can't travel. I like how the vendors won't shit you if you know basic antique value; they don't have some sales pitch prepared because most items are unique. Many items are keepsakes and therefore a collector respects them, regardless of value. Sometimes if you hear a well-rehearsed sales pitch, you are smelling a rat. It's not like shopping at Target. Angela's my favorite flea market buddy, but her parents are visiting this weekend and I've been in a weird mood, so I just went by myself, latte, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition bouncing in my loud blue wagon across the Bay Bridge into the wind of south San Francisco. A sunny day, but of course I wanted it hotter. This year I can't wait for the heat of summer to come. Something has changed between me and the vendors. It's the way we understand each other during eye contact. Today I was treated as a regular, as a trooper because I actually came out in the wind. Everybody just wanted to go home. Consensus was: the day was a wash. Vendors looked at me smiling and passing on expensive items, poking around, and maybe they thought of me as a true collector, as one of them. I learned that vendors are charged $45 a stall, but they think that sucks because it used to be just $30 a stall. "This place used to be packed, the whole parking lot, when it was just $30 a stall." The man who told me this was a full head shorter than me, older than me by twenty years at least but his jumpy, fast movements and his longing eyes reminded me of kids in middle school, sad because the school districts changed and half our friends had to leave. "Now, what?" I looked around. There seemed to be a third less vendors as usual, but I figured that was just because of the wind. Clothes blowing about like flags, chairs scuttling backwards, books flapping open. I had already passed three partially closed stalls and it wasn't yet 1 pm; vendors with closed expressions packed up their cars and raised their eyebrows and shoulders. One winked knowingly at me. "Can't get a good turnout on a windy day, can we?" I found a few wonderful things, but they are immaterial to this story. For some reason, the 101 was packed, so I drove straight through San Francisco, cutting through the Castro and the Haight to the 1 (By this time, the wind blew all cloud cover away, I was listening to Iron & Wine and eating a banana. A nice lady in a gargantuan Lexus SUV, also eating in her car, gave me directions to the 1. She let me cut in front of her to make a right hand turn, waving me over with her half-eaten danish), driving over the Golden Gate and through the Marin Headlands, watching the weather bat tourists about. Ended up at the Ashby flea market, no wind at all on this side of the bay so it was filled with people filled with stalls, air musky, drum circle a thrum so constant you forgot it was there, ticking along like a heartbeat in the background. I bought earrings from an earnest man with immaculately sculpted swirls of facial hair. "All the earrings come with a guarantee. If one breaks, I'll fix it. If you lose one, I'll make a new mate. I make them all myself. I make them all myself. You see her?" He pointed down his tables to a woman dressed in a bright blue shirt and black slacks, she seemed to me summer and business all at once. I could tell she felt him pointing at her, but she gracefully kept her eyes on the display. "I made her earrings. She got them from me -- a long time ago." He smiled at me, tilting his chin upwards, letting his smile slowly break into his face. The earrings I bought from him were loops of black beads -- very simple, but intricate. The beads looked like tiny flat black donuts, little label-less 45 RPM records, and there were hundreds of them strung together. Five bucks. The single white vendor was a boy my age, sitting behind a square folding table covered in plants. All day I had been talking to vendors, but around him I was shy. I was scared to approach his little card table, especially since it was just him, nobody else surrounding him, and he was seated at the table too. It felt very intimate. Too intimate for me to approach him and look at his plants, but also too dear for me to pass without greeting him. So hopeful and endearing. I remember hesitating before making eye contact, but being relieved once I did. His eyes were warm and I wished him good luck with mine as I walked by. He is the sort of boy that I want to talk to. Perhaps I'll warm up to that as summer comes. But I passed by, and quickly, and almost ran right into a young white woman with flawless skin and artfully arranged crusty peace-punk clothes, yanking at her dog's leash as she argued with the vendor next door to plant boy. The dog was a wiemaraner, looked pure blood, and also had swollen nipples, indicating a recent litter. I guessed the young lady was breeding pure breeds, and for some reason this seemed to me a direct clash with the politics her clothes stank of. Especially when you think of how many strays there are in the world. She yanked on the leash again, hard, and the dog's eyes bulged and I hated the girl more. The vendor was a middle-aged black woman with thick arms crossed against her chest (patiently, not aggressively) and amused eyes. She was calmly pointing out the holes in the young anarchist's argument (something about how the parking lot wasn't really hers, even if she paid to rent space on it or something) and effortlessly belittling her at the same time. This made me smile, because I like to see the arrogant taken down a few notches. Flea markets rarely display any such senses of entitlement; usually such self-righteous shoppers stick to malls or mail order. When I got home, the afternoon got a little hotter. I showed Donovan my bounty, we sat on the front stoop and watched the grandkids of one of our neighbors swarm the street. I changed into a tank top and wandered for a few blocks, crossing the street to the sunnier side each time I turned a corner. On Colby a woman dressed in expensive yoga clothes was laying on her back on her front walk, just laying there, as if she had passed out. Her face was in direct sunlight, eyes squeezed shut, but she looked comfortable otherwise. She didn't stir as I passed by, just exhaled slowly. 9:35 pm - 05.11.08 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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