Saturday Market #6: Our Mothers Day Traditions

Saturday Market is an innovative place. Every week new products, new vendors, new visitors... But it's also a place of traditions and Mothers Day brings some of those around. First off there's finding something for Mom. I was on one of my very brief photo forays and these quilt and button hearts caught my eye. So I took the shot and was just about to wander on when the little voice in my head said "Mom would love that!" and so I bought it. And Little Voice was right, she does love it.

It's also our tradition to give stuff away, pretty much like door prizes, except we have no door. Vendors give me stuff, really nice stuff, like jewelry, including a gorgeous silver and set stone pendant from Greg and Mary Kuhnle, and a stained glass kaleidoscope with pressed flowers to view from Larry Pagen, and pottery and clothing and soaps and the list goes on and on, fifty or so artisans giving me seventy five gifts to distribute. Every time I stepped away from the stage, somebody would hand me stuff. That is just so cool. And every hour we drew names out of the basket and gave stuff away. This time I had help one time from my son Victor, and another time from my Mom, Maron. Fortunately she didn't notice the quilt heart laying right there on top of the sound board, phew! As always, a splendid time was had by all, especially those folks who got to pick a goodie from the choices I laid out on the steps in front of the stage.


Another fine tradition, getting out a week before and finding a mother artisan whose child is also on site to photograph for my ads. This time out I found Karen Nunley and Sierra Nunley-Gross. Bonus points for them both being Market Vendors in their own rights! Karen has just started with her Holy Donuts, and Sierra has been selling her Oh, Snap! handbags, wallets and other accessories for a couple of years. Dad Jimmy Manigrossi also sells his pet tags in the booth, but didn't make it into the photo this time around. I love how the handbag matches the donuts! And the smiles of course...


The day always wraps up with a set by marimba band Kudana. I can't even remember when we started doing it this way, but it sure feels just right. I bet Kudana has been around the longest of all Eugene's many marimba bands, and their multi-generational merry band always brings joy to the Park Blocks. We actually haven't had a lot of luck with the marimba band/sunny days thing this year, but it didn't really rain and the sun very nearly broke through the clouds a couple of times. I picked this particular shot of them because I love the sentiment expressed on Kayte's hoodie "Make Life Iller." Yeah, let's keep doing that!

Looks like a hot one coming at us this weekend, 80+ degrees?! Better go start on the sunscreen right now...

Saturday Market #5: YouTube, the New Frontier

I've been thinking about this for a couple of years, and not getting around to it. Getting a blog going was the big cyberspace expansion two years back, and the Flickr photostream was last year's web adventure. So finally over the winter I figured out that my digital camera actually does OK with video, and then I figured out how to post videos on YouTube. It's pretty exciting really, but kind of daunting. Just doing the basic "getting it out there" is simple. Making it actually look reasonable, that's going to take some fiddling and fussing. So here it is, my first Market YouTube video. It looks all blurry and awful, and I'm going to be working on that, but it sounds pretty good.

Luckily, the moment that I chose to record was a perfect one. This is Carl "Bus Man" Faddis. Along with being a fine performer with a glorious voice, he's an LTD bus driver. Lots of his riders turn up to see him when he plays, and so he played them this special song, "Bus Riders in the Sky." As you can see he's got a great sense of humor as well, and lots of supporters in the audience...



I've got a couple of clips from opening day to add as well, and I'm planning on adding other stuff, not just music clips, but little interviews and a walk or two through the place. I've also been looking at other people's Market videos. There are a couple of recently posted clips from June of 1992 that are fun to watch. It was just a couple of months after I started as assistant manager, and since it's from the stage area, I saw myself wander through, and had to wonder at my clothing choice for the day (just like most people do every week). I also saw lots of familiar faces, folks that are still there dancing in front of the stage every Saturday afternoon. Sixteen years later, that's really cool and really Eugene. I've favorited these clips, so you can find them by clicking here to go to my YouTube channel.

Meanwhile, I've been contemplating adding a MySpace page to the Market's cyberempire, but I'm still undecided on that one. I think I'll take the time to perfect the video thing first. Really, the place is so actual rather than virtual, so much more analog than digital, it's hard to do it justice out here in the ether...

Saturday Market #4: Just Right!

Only week four and they seem to have gotten the thermostat adjusted! It was a perfect sunny day, not too hot, not too cold, not too bright or dark, just exactly right. It felt great and everybody seemed very happy to be there. The weather perfected itself just in time for my monthly photo tour of the Market. I try to get out and take photos every Saturday, but the last Saturday of the month it's imperative that I get out and find all the photos I need to do my monthly website update. I need pix for the front page and the photo page, which I usually have enough of, but I also need photos of new products and the Beautiful Booth of the Month.

So I dash out during stage sets that seem likely to proceed successfully without my supervision (it almost always works out anyway), put my eyeballs on and look for promising shots. I found this lovely collection of marquetry boxes right in my own backyard just about, down the steps at Steven DeLang's booth.



The row of 4x4 booths on the edges of the West Block is always a great place to spot the new products, like these cute cute baby onesies by Rosalee Reynolds.


Then cruising through the West Block, I found an entire color-coordinated neighborhood! I bet they didn't plan it that way, but it looks really good.


I even made it over to Farmers' Market, where various plant starts are always the highlight of the first month or so.


And it's always fun to take the Beautiful Booth shots, to settle in and get familiar with someone's work for a little while. Susan Fishel is the Beautiful Booth owner this month, here's one of my favorite photos of her work, teamed up with Mother Nature's.


You can head over to the Saturday Market website to see the rest of what I found. It looks like we could get another "just right" Saturday this week, so see you there!

Saturday Market #3: The Real OPPOSITE Day

It all seemed so impossible. I was still warm from the sunburn when I started hearing the rumors. No, not the "R" word we all dread, but the "S" word! No not that one, silly... SNOW! On Saturday? In mid April? One week after record breaking 84 degree weather? Sure. Yeah. Whatever.

So come Saturday morning, I am rising, shining, then staring in amazement at the floaty white flakes falling onto the apple blossoms in the yard. Though picturesque, it causes a great deal of grumbling and layering, layering, layering. Once I am nearly immobilized by coats on polarfleece on longsleeve shirts on skirt on jeans on polarfleece socks on snow boots, I trundle off to the car and the chilly park blocks. But lo and behold, I am not alone! Other well bundled folks are there with their booths, ready for the day. And as soon as 10 am rolls around, customers are there too! Now I know for absolute certain that Oregonians will head out into any weather when the need for community and handcrafted goodies and pad thai and cheesecake arises.


As it turned out, the sun broke through on occasion, and it only hailed really hard a couple of times, never really rained.


But it did stay under 50 degrees, and nearer to 40 most of the day. Huge thanks to all the brave musicians who came out and played through the chilly sets and kept our spirits lifted. As frequently happens, musicians came to see each others' sets and ended up sitting in some, that's always an extra treat. Here's Richard Crandell playing a number with Brian Cutean...


And as usual, many conversations about clothing and the fine art of layering took place during the day, and Fran (from Oregon Events Enterprises, our security folks) and I were happy to discover that we were wearing matching swirly blue Polar Fleece socks. It's the little things that make my day...

And the big things, like a decent temperature in the forecast for next Saturday - 68 and cloudy, I'll take it!

Saturday Market #2: The REAL Opening Day

Yowza! What a day that was! The forecast was for mid 70s and sunny. A little hard to believe in the middle of the chilly week, but Saturday morning there was the sun. And there were no clouds. And there were people, lots and lots of people. Lots of beautiful, happy, festive people in every spot and nook and cranny in the place. All day long. And then it was 84 degrees! In the afternoon as I walked through the food court I saw sights I'd never seen. Sold Out signs at the Pizza booth? at the Smoothie booth? at Saritza's Mexican food booth? Food folks said they were completely busy from before opening up to the end of the day.


Acoustic Etouffee provided a great soundtrack for the afternoon, as did Ichele and the Circle of Light. Market is one of those rare places where Cajun music and Reggae can both be a perfect compliment to the mood of the day. Mark Baker from the Register Guard was at Market for a while with his video camera, and put together a sweet little video that you can see here:
Saturday Market Live. I think he captured a good slice of the day's life.

In my rush to get out the door in the morning I thought "Sunscreen? naaaah, no time to unearth it, no big deal, it's only April after all..." Oops. I was pretty lobstery by the end of the day. Apparently many other folks had the same thought, as I looked around and saw that I was not alone in the land of very pink people. Seems like we'll all have plenty of time to recover this week without fear of re-burning. In fact, we may be fighting off the frostbite again as the forecast is saying not even 50 degrees with hail and thunderstorms. Yowza again, but not in a good way... it's going to make the REAL opening day seem like a crazy dream we all had.

Saturday Market #1: Back on the Blocks

So many photos to choose from! But it was that smile that won me over. We all had that smile during the day, the big old happy, happy, glad-to-see-you, love-you-man smile for each other. Especially when Samba Ja was playing, they were so perfect for the day!



The weather was not so great, but not so awful. Gray, chilly and damp, sprinkly, showery even at times, but never rainy. It didn't stop anybody from showing up, not on our first chance to get out and Be Eugene. Look, barely an empty spot in the food court at lunchtime, and it stayed that way all day long.



I always go on about how it never rains on marimba bands, so that's why I hire them for Opening Day, I've seen some miraculous marimba related weather changes over the years. So it didn't reeeeallly rain, it did sprinkle some now and again, but it didn't Rain rain... Hokoyo was back for the second time and they were absolutely wonderful, so energetic! They really make this beautiful traditional music sound fresh and new and exciting. Nobody noticed that it was damp at all, they just danced.

All in all, a beautiful, fun, delightful Opening Day. I hesitate to mention the forecast of sun and 70 for next Saturday, it sure is fun to imagine, though...

Field Trip!

Last Saturday was my final free Saturday until the end of the year. So what did I choose to do? Go to Saturday Market in Portland of course. I try to get there once a year before we open up just to get in the Market mood. I happened to time it perfectly, the one hour I was there was the one hour of sun, no hail, no snow, just nice warm sun. And Market booths, and Market people, and Market vibes all around. It's not the same as our Market, but what would be the fun of that? It's definitely more urban, and this year they are contending with a major site change as they deal with building remodellings right in the middle of their site. Next year they'll be across the way in the waterfront park as I understand it. As a park-dwelling Marketeer, I predict they'll love it. Meanwhile, the Market is partly in the blocked off street, and as you can see, traffic signs are smack dab in the middle of the food court. Not an optimal situation, but a testament to the ability of Market folks to Make It Work!

And so I returned, feeling all Markety, getting anxious to get it all going, to Make It Work. Come Saturday morning, that's just what we'll all get together and do. See you there!