1 month ago
Strolling nan commercialized corridor atop Seattle’s Capitol Hill vicinity connected a caller Friday afternoon, I drawback a cappella voices booming down nan block: Every woman, each man, subordinate nan caravan of emotion …
It’s nan improbable siren opus flowing from nan unfastened doors of nan Punk Rock flea market. This offbeat, itinerant festivals has been popping up here, wrong a erstwhile supermarket, 4 times a twelvemonth since 2024, filling nan 20,000-sq-ft abstraction near vacant erstwhile a Kroger-owned QFC abruptly ceased operations and moved out.
The $1 introduction interest hasn’t accrued since 2006, erstwhile nan first Punk Rock flea marketplace was held successful an abandoned basement barroom crossed town. After occupying 13 different locations astir nan city, including a erstwhile station office, a erstwhile drugstore and a erstwhile portion club, it’s now settled successful its existent location successful Seattle’s historically queer arts epicenter.
I salary my measurement successful pinch pouch alteration and measurement into a parking batch fixed complete to dozens of booths, tables and a food-truck court. People of each property and style mill astir successful nan outpouring sunshine. Inside nan building, DJ Port-a-Party slides from the Housemartins to Kermit nan Frog singing The Rainbow Connection. Hundreds of shoppers and much vendors – 204 successful each – prosecute successful a bustling system wholly of their ain making. According to organizers, much than 8,000 group will move done this play – a humble tally, which during December installments typically reaches into 5 figures.
Even a constricted litany of items for waste would beryllium excessively agelong for this article; suffice to say, nan Punk Rock flea marketplace is portion renegade creation gallery, portion unfathomable gait waste and portion curated vintage mall, overflowing pinch treasures and trash. Where nan QFC’s nutrient conception utilized to be, a female shows artwork made from dried seaweed adjacent to an rebel bookseller adjacent to a feline hawking carved woody daggers. In nan aged storeroom, hundreds of Hot Wheels and action figures bent successful a show reminiscent of a 1980s Toys R Us. Behind a barroom that was erstwhile nan deli section, volunteers service brew and basking dogs. Every quadrate inch of each vertical aboveground – and overmuch of nan level and ceiling – has been painted, wheat-pasted, stickered and graffitied, nan evolving contributions of hundreds of section artists, immoderate commissioned, others extemporaneous. The crowd is arsenic spectacular, a parade of eye-boggling manner and individual expression.
“I’m an ageing punk. I’m a weirdo,” says Ray Myzelle Bones, a regular Punk Rock flea marketplace vendor trading lavender salts and sprays she makes connected her workplace extracurricular nan city. “This is simply a spot that’s safe for neuro-spicy people. It’s besides this existent of organization that group opportunity we’ve lost, but we haven’t. It conscionable lives location else.”
The past 20 years person not been benignant to nan punks of Seattle. In that time, nan US Pacific north-west’s largest metropolis shape-shifted from low-stakes, overachieving taste incubator to nan US’s hub of neoliberal firm capitalism. The cost of surviving has blown up by 78%, according to nan Bureau of Labor Statistics. The city’s coming position arsenic the 12th astir costly successful nan world – unimaginable during Seattle’s grunge heyday – doesn’t time off overmuch room for artists and freaks to unrecorded successful nan spot they made famous.
The Punk Rock flea marketplace has not only hung connected for 20 years, it’s much celebrated than ever, seemingly galvanized by Seattleites’ acute desire for immoderate benignant of replacement economical reality. DJ Port-a-Party, aka Rob Zverina, cites nan Punk Rock flea marketplace arsenic an illustration of Czech philosopher Václav Benda’s “parallel polis”, a self-contained nine existing for and by itself arsenic a reflector to nan position quo.
What began arsenic an anti-establishment endeavor has itself go nan establishment, successful nan process deepening its community-minded values. The Punk Rock flea marketplace operates arsenic a non-profit that donates proceeds to Seattle’s Low Income Housing Institute and includes arsenic labor erstwhile unhoused people. It maintains a debased barroom to introduction to let for maximum accessibility. Attribute this ethos of organization caretaking to Josh Okrent, nan Punk Rock flea market’s founding punk.
“Punk stems from a philharmonic style, but there’s an full worldview that transcends nan music,” Okrent, a 57-year-old begetter of 2 and longtime master non-profit money developer, tells me. “We are punk successful that we are defining our ain identity. We’re not governmental successful position of actively resisting anything, but we are organizing to waste and acquisition among ourselves successful a measurement that refuses to admit immoderate different bid and makes nary concession.”
An anti-capitalist marketplace?
“Trading is simply a earthy quality thing,” Okrent says. “It’s been going connected since measurement earlier capitalism and will proceed agelong aft capitalism is dead. All nan money is being kept successful nan community, and that’s nan objective.”
Okrent’s affable guidance has seen nan Punk Rock flea marketplace done challenging times. After nan marketplace outgrew its original location, Okrent spent years moving it to a bid of spaces near vacant by erstwhile tenants earlier caller improvement turned them into sprawling condos aliases costly commercialized existent estate, resilient for illustration a cockroach surviving repeated disasters. During nan pandemic, it took complete an abandoned Bartell Drugs, astatine 15,000 sq ft its largest footprint astatine that point, acknowledgment to a boost from nan metropolis of Seattle’s Storefronts program, which paid nan market’s rent. This location was crushed zero for nan collision of Seattle’s homelessness and fentanyl crises, successful a downtown halfway hollowed by Covid.
“We had these group not only surviving connected our doorstep, but dying connected our doorstep,” Okrent says.
Ruby Tuesday Romero, who attended nan inaugural Punk Rock flea marketplace arsenic a teen and later joined nan staff, led organization outreach efforts. She responded to an electrical occurrence started by squatters and administered Narcan to group who had overdosed.
“As personification who’d precocious exited homelessness, it was a really large woody for maine to beryllium a portion of that organization and effort to thief others successful that situation,” she says.
Okrent credits lessons learned and credibility gained from nan Punk Rock flea market’s 18 months downtown for starring to nan market’s Shangri-la connected Capitol Hill. Today, nan Punk Rock flea marketplace receives backing from 4Culture, an arts granting statement of nan county, and is collaborated pinch powerful existent property improvement patient Hunters Capital connected nan lease of nan aged QFC.
“The building was surgery into respective times and was successful really unsmooth shape,” says Jill Cronauer, main operating serviceman of Hunters Capital. “So 1 of our biggest questions was, really is anyone going to return this abstraction and make it work?” Okrent’s business transportation to Hunters included upgrading and securing nan spot arsenic good arsenic improving nationalist information by bringing life and civilization into nan neighborhood. Cronauer and her colleagues astatine Hunters were persuaded capable to return connected nan consequence of a impermanent tenant. “These guys are conscionable truthful talented and imaginative and person specified an astonishing unpaid squad down them that they made nan abstraction what it is today,” she says.
In a metropolis suffering from chronic vacancies and exorbitant rents, Okrent sees Hunters arsenic an outlier, a existent property developer genuinely aligned pinch organization needs.
“It’s uncommon that I person bully things to opportunity astir landlords,” he says, “but these guys person been fantastic.”
Okrent owns nan Punk Rock flea marketplace sanction arsenic a business licence successful Washington state, but beyond that he takes nary ownership of nan concept; he says a Punk Rock flea marketplace opened successful Philadelphia successful 2006, concurrent but unrelated. Over nan past 20 years, he’s connected pinch organizers successful London and Berlin and hosted exchanges pinch folks from Reno, each of whom now run their ain versions; much unaffiliated Punk Rock flea markets person opened successful Toronto, Winnipeg, New Jersey, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and elsewhere. His paid unit of 11 meets play to scheme events year-round, specified arsenic all-ages concerts, manner shows and raves. In nan Punk Rock flea market’s anarchistic shape of governance, statement happens done statement and compromise, decisions made collectively among staff, volunteers and vendors. They’re leasing from Hunters connected a six-month-by-six-month basis, pinch plans to enactment put done adjacent twelvemonth – aliases whenever it makes financial consciousness to statesman building connected nan six-story mixed-use improvement taking nan spot of nan aged building.
“There’s nary magnitude of money that could switch nan civilization that we’ve created for ourselves,” Okrent says. “At nan extremity of nan day, it’s astir nan group who make it happen. We for illustration each different and we for illustration moving together, and there’s thing awesome astir coming together successful nan situation of this abandoned building and turning it into thing beautiful – beautiful by our standards.”
