With hundreds of things cultural, artistic and beautiful to see, do or buy in this town, come dawn on a weekend morning, there is a steady stream of traffic north to the one spot where anyone who is hip waits to go all week-an outdoor flea market that looks like a cross between a monstrous desert-country yard sale and a Babylonian bazaar.
Going to the Santa Fe flea market is the in thing for tourists to do these days. Not that locals are jaded-they are often regulars. So much so it is not an unusual sight for Santa Feans to be seen saying howdy to friends in the aisles at the market. Or for tourists to be greeting acquaintances from back home, just as they did in the old days down at the general store, or before that, in ancient times, at the crossroads souk where the caravan stopped.
Officially known as Trader Jack`s Flea Market, though generally referred to as ”the Santa Fe Flea Market,” this one is actually in Tesuque, on 12 acres of land which belong to Tesuque Pueblo, just off U.S. Highway 285, and right next door to the Santa Fe Opera. The flea market moved here in 1983 from cramped quarters on Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe, where it began 15 years ago, to the tune of basso profundo protests from the opera, which screamed, ”There goes the neighborhood!” as caravans of vans, pickup trucks, campers and cars crammed with every conceivable form of goods, streamed past its entrance.
Enchantment has settled again over the valley, however, as there is no deodorant like success. As Caggie Daniels (no relation to the author of this piece), who with husband Trader Jack (also no relation) owns and runs the flea market, says, ”I`m sure they don`t like to think of us as right over the fence, but it is the greatest place in the world to shop for costumes and props for the opera.”
Worldly sorts like Spencer Throckmorton, one of the country`s top ethnographic art dealers and owner of the New York gallery, Fine Arts of Ancient Lands, say that Trader Jack`s is ”the best flea market in America. I love it. I go all the time,” said Throckmorton.
It is said to be surpassed in size and scope of wares by Portobello Road in London and the Paris and Rome flea markets, and perhaps by one or two others in Africa in an informal survey of Third World travelers.
Unsurpassed setting
Flea markets by their nature are tacky, hectic carnivals of washed-up wares. But it would be hard to find one that has a more beautiful setting than Trader Jack`s. As one plunges down the dusty, sun-beaten aisles, scanning the heaped merchandise, so as to pounce on the object of one`s desire before anyone else does, from time to time the eyes are called upward and across the road to the heart-stopping purple mountain majesty of the Sangre de Cristos.
”Look at that; this could be anywhere,” sighed a man who has logged thousands of miles in primitive countries around the world as he stared at the Sangre de Cristos. ”This could be Afghanistan; it could be Kurdistan,” he said, so timelessly, pristinely primitive is the landscape.
That`s the larger view. As for the smaller, another thing that distinguishes the Santa Fe flea market from others is that vendors are a cut above and beyond the usual, with better wares and more dash, more cash and more style on the part of the buyers. Which makes the people-watching here prime.
”If you had a TV camera and went around, people would say you`ve overdone it,” said Susan Mongerson, owner of Mongerson Wunderlich Gallery of Western art in Chicago, and a habitue of the Santa Fe flea market, that is, concentrated on the outrageous and the off-the-wall. Even Fellini might say,
”No, too much!” at some of the characters, but they are all real.
Many seem to be acting out other personas, other roles.
During my visit, there was one picturesque vendor in a leopardskin loincloth and dreadlocks down to his bare chest.
”You think he`s some deranged fool off the highway and then you find out he owns four stores in Los Angeles,” said Mongerson.
Lawyer turned vendor
She says she bought a `50s lamp of chrome with glass globes that lit up and down its length, and as the vendor wrapped it, she asked him where he had a store. ”I don`t have a store,” he replied, ”I`m a lawyer.”
She also noted that ”there`s always palm and crystal readers here. Where do you get that any-where else? I`ve never been to a Corn Belt flea market that had that!”
”They let themselves go more; maybe it is the altitude, but it really brings out the best and worst there,” she said.
Another thing which makes it different is that it is ”like an international bazaar,” as one visitor called it.
If flea markets in America are a microcosm of our melting pot-grizzled junk dealers next to housewives selling dainty porcelains and Depression glassware and country gents selling arts and crafts furniture-Santa Fe is a microcosm of the planet.
There are Africans selling Dogon mudcloth from West Africa, ropes of trading beads, grime-blackened sculptures. There are vendors with pillows of silken ikat fabric from Guatemala, or carved gourds and other folk art from Peru, or exquisite Huichol Indian beadwork masks from Mexico, or guys in cowboy hats and jeans selling vintage cowboy boots and stiffened horse tack or heaps of Pendleton blankets.
Of course there`s more mundane items, such as old and new clothing, hardware and tools, soaps and shampoos, kitchen utensils, packaged nuts and fresh fruits and tons of trinkets.
Around the parking lot entrance you`ll find people selling puppies they claim are half-wolf.
Up to 400 dealers
The number of dealers will vary, but on a good weekend, which includes Friday, Saturday and Sunday from dawn to dusk, there may be up to 400.
”We have a lot of vendors that come for the summer and stay in their motor homes,” said Daniels. ”They stay even if they don`t sell anything;
they say the view from their motor homes is terrific.”
She says it has only been ”in the last five or six years,” that the vendors have become more oriented toward ethnographic arts and crafts as Santa Fe itself has become multicultural and become known as ”the ethnographic arts capital” of the United States.
”When we first started it was like other flea markets; there was a lot of junk,” Daniels said candidly. ”We still have a lot of garage sale type vendors, but even their things are quality. It`s just a wonderful place to shop.”
Buyers, in turn, come from all over the U.S., Europe and the Orient. More often than not the crowd contains many well-known local and visiting artists, gallery owners, ethnographic arts dealers, movie stars, entrepreneurs and bargain hunters of every kind.
”We get calls from travel agents all over the United States. So many people know about it. Psychology Today and Good Housekeeping have written us up,” said Daniels.
What draws them more above all else is the plunder from all over the planet, the immense scope of the merchandise, the feeling that here one might unearth anything, and one might make it one`s own for a pittance.
Bargaining is accepted as an art form here. You can attempt to shave the price off something that was a good buy to begin with, and the vendors go along. You have the satisfaction of playing the ancient game.
Bargaining`s the thing
Allen Blagden, a distinguished artist from Connecticut, said, ”I hate shopping, and I love bargaining; I just do garage sales in New England.” He got a beaded belt from Ghana for $50 at the Santa Fe flea. ”I didn`t want it, I didn`t need it, but I got it down from $80. That`s the challenge.”
Mongerson found a kitschy pair of roller skates with small crocodile heads mounted on their toes, which she was especially proud of. More American folk art included a clock made out of an old hubcap with a crucifix affixed to its lower half, and small Italian Christmas tree lights encircling the rim.
She bought several pairs of vintage cowboy boots as gifts for her gallery staff, as well as vintage clothing, and ”a photo of Elvis Presley in a turban. I`ve definitely found some very bizarre things there,” she said.
Throckmorton said he ”bought everything from a Roualt woodblock print to a Edward Weston photograph of the nautilus,” at the Santa Fe flea. ”I bought fossils, American Indian jewelry and textiles. It has a great view and the coffee place sells a great cherry muffin.”
Su Zanne, a designer whose hand-made prairie skirts can be found at Handwoven Originals at the Inn at Loretto, has furnished her adobe house with finds from the flea market, where she has been hunting almost as long as she has lived there, for six years.
`Handed-down` look
”Some major pieces have come from the flea market as well as accessories. (I`ve found) a wonderful wrought iron candelabra, chests, a wash stand an eight-panel screen, an old breadbox, some really good baskets. I`ve tried to stay with Southwest furniture, as far as authenticity goes. I wanted to have a look that says it has been handed down, sort of like Ralph Lauren.
”I`ve found a lot of my sterling silver dressing table accessories and perfume bottles there, as well as lace for my bed. There are book vendors out there who sell out-of-print Southwest books that are hard to find.
”It`s my favorite place. Most of us around here who are serious artists go there because of the textiles. It is not an ordinary flea market. A lot of artist-vendors go there because it attracts every tourist who comes to Santa Fe. You have the incredible view, considered one of the best in Santa Fe, and it is so friendly and relaxing.
When should you go there to search for your personal ”Holy Grail?” The Santa Fe flea market also operates on Indian time, that is, weather permitting. There are no set dates when it opens and closes.
”We like to say we`re open year round, but January and February are so cold, we`d don`t try to do anything. Sometimes we have a beautiful December and we stay open,” said Daniels.
For more information, call 505-455-7874.
