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.
The NAAPOC
kinda like it (or not, don’t know which is mo’ woke correct)
Let them try to figure out how to incorporate the latest bizarre and clumsy initials, such as BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) or QTPOC (queer trans people of color).
You’re obviously RACISS !
Must be, what with me believing that the current crop of humanity came from three brother patriarchs named Shem, Ham and Japtheth . . .
Just tell the fools that you are like Shaun King, a white guy who says he is a black guy and is getting away with it.
That should stump them. Might even lead to lawsuits.
Even vendors of color?
Undocumented Shoppers?
Re: Free vendor space for people of color
A great opportunity to locate everything that has ever been stolen from your house or your car.
Many of them already do that anyway.
I throw leftovers out into the yard for the birds, but it also attracts skunks.
A little spray tan makes a white person acceptably black, just like a dress and makeup can make a man acceptably feminine. It’s all about appearances in the world of wokeness, not substance.
This needs to be taken to court as arbitrarily discriminatory and divisive, and not inclusive. https://www.hbgflea.com/about
Seems racist and actionable in court.
This is why the biased owners of Advance Communications and PennLive and Patriot News (and many other leftist leaning publications across USA) took away the right and ability of their customer readers to comment directly on their news stories. The article would have been full of noteworthy critical comments asking how this discriminatory action will make us unified.
Very true about PennLive following a leftist agenda and eliminating opportunities for other viewpoints to be voiced. BTW, I have visited this flea market. It is a postage stamp tiny one lot market that is mostly utilized by local urban “artists” who pedal arts, crafts and recycled junk. I toured on a busy Saturday and no more than 16 stands were occupied. Don’t think more than 24 could be shoehorned in. This is not a commercially viable operation, but a collective probably operating on a lot provided free by the city redevelopment organization. The article makes it sound like something much bigger than it is. PennLive is magnifying a flyspeck to emphasize and promote how woke and progressive the Harrisburg community is becoming.
Thanks for the feedback. You are likely right on the money that PL is promoting a flyspeck and woke narrative. I miss not having the ability to give and receive feedback on these kinds of stories and read how others see it. They prefer to keep the public under their thumb and not have the ability to publicly critique them.
I was almost ready to resubscribe with them when they pulled comments. Back when they first went 3 days a week it became a chore to read the paper. I wish Central PA had a good news source.
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.