Posted on 07/10/2020 7:16:02 PM PDT by lightman
The HBG Flea, a monthly “curated pop-up market,” has announced that it will hold its first event since March, a limited event on Saturday that will require face masks and encourage social distancing.
“We’re excited to be back - this is like our family and we miss the vendors and community a lot,” Mary Imgrund and Meghan Weaver, co-founders of The HBG Flea said in an e-mail.
The show’s organizers also announced via its Facebook page earlier this week that in an attempt to be more inclusive, people of color from here on out will be able to get a vendors space for free and will be given preference in the application process.
“We saw and heard that the flea is not representative of the entire vibrant community of Harrisburg, and as a white-owned business operating in a gentrified part of town, we believed it was our duty to not just offer empty platitudes towards inclusion but actively put our values before our profit,” Imgrund and Weaver said. “Focusing on getting more diverse art into the market is one way to uphold our mission of supporting our community. We also really don’t want the focus to be on us - it’s about making sure our space is reflective of the amazing multitude of arts in Harrisburg, some of which hasn’t been nearly present enough, and we needed to do something material to make that happen.”
The deadline to apply to the next HBG Flea event on Aug. 1 is Saturday while the deadline to apply for the Sept. 5 event is July 25.
“Artists can now indicate on our application if they believe their artwork or products would help make the flea more representative of the Harrisburg community, and we will sponsor their participation fee,” Imgrund and Weaver said. “This policy will be practiced in perpetuity.”
Imgrund and Weaver said that they have received a number of new applications from new artists and they said that the response has shown them that the change was necessary. And while they have received both positive and negative feedback from their Facebook post, they have chosen to focus on the positive feedback.
“There was a lot of both very positive and very negative reactions to the post,” Imgrund and Weaver said. “We don’t want to center those who took umbrage with the announcement, but rather those who said that they welcome more diversity in the art and those who now feel their work will be appreciated and welcomed for the first time. Representation is extremely important to us, so while some may decide to shop elsewhere, others will see themselves represented adequately for the first time, and that value is immeasurable. We don’t want to just offer words of support, we want to take action.”
Booths typically cost $25 for a small space and $50 for a larger space, according to the company’s website. And all vendors must obtain the proper licenses through the city of Harrisburg.
This Saturday, July 11, the company will hold a limited event from noon to 3 p.m. in the Midtown Cinema parking lot, 250 Riley St., Harrisburg.
The event will be limited to 16 vendors and only 200 people will be allowed in the parking lot at a time. Face masks are required for both shoppers and vendors. If the event is at capacity, HBG Flea said it may ask people to wait in a socially-distant line to enter.
“We are requiring face masks and offering some handmade ones we made at a “pay-what-you-want” price, we are limiting the number of vendors to 16 maximum in the parking lot (instead of the typical 50) to make sure we can space them out enough for shopping to happen without crowding any one vendor, and we are limiting the capacity in the parking lot to 200 and will ask shoppers to form a socially distant queue to enter,” Imgrund and Weaver said.
The HBG Flea is usually held on the first Saturday of each month and features vintage and antique goods, original art, craft and handmade items, food trucks and prepared food and upcycled goods.
HBG Flea holds its events at Strawberry Square in Harrisburg half of the year and in the parking lot of the Midtown Cinema the other half of the year.
I guess you could.
Simply present your superior skin color to the attendant to collect your privilege.
I wouldn’t pay if I knew the black guy next to me got it for free because he’s black.
Customers will probably get their ass beat if they buy from the wrong vendor.
“...We are moving away from equality to something else....”
We are moving away from equality BACK TO PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT. Some call it racism.
Where’s this “white privelege” I always read about? Is it at the end of the rainbow with the skittles crapping unicorn?
Reparations by any other name.
When racial preferences are so blatantly in the open, people who do the shopping can undo that racial preference, by...
skipping those that got the free vendor space, and going straight to the people who paid for their vendor space.
It would be seen as racial discrimination by those that skip the ‘people of color’ vendor spaces, but then, isn’t it also racial discrimination when the people of color get the free vendor space?
The Marxists will try to bake this crap into constitutional law.
A pofisticated variant...
I wrote them a note on FB that I will not endorse their soft racism of believing that blacks need their help and can’t excel on their own. I will make a point of never patronizing them.
Discrimination against white people is racism.
That is a fact.
Anyone who claims differently is a sociopath and a liar—and you do not want to be doing business with them.
Well I am glad you did. I do not use facebook but maybe they have an email link.
For some reason this really “triggered” me.
May we use them interchangeably ?
asking for friend
Could ya get, say, 20% off for a nice tan?
I saw a video the other day and it was a black woman talking about white privilege and she said it was a myth. She made a lot of sense. She said a lot of black people have chips on their shoulders.
More like F'n barn beams.
well I am not going...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.