Fighting Insularity with Mobility at the Flea Market
February 22, 2015
Sundays for most students are stereotypically spent silently dreading the onslaught of another week of midterms, papers, and project deadlines. But on this particular uncharacteristically drizzly and cold Southern California Sunday, Soham and I had the opportunity to visit Artists and Fleas, a flea market on Mateo Street in the Arts District.
The flea market, for those who haven’t yet visited, occupies an inconspicuous tarmac lot sealed by a black wrought iron fence. However, the air around the market is far from inconspicuous — with a variety of people coming from all walks of life. (Some even literally, as quite a few people brought their four-legged friends.)
When we arrived, three trucks had already set up shop at the entrance. The first being a blue truck called: “The Library Store on Wheels.” Soham and I were enticed by its glowing fairy lights and cozy interior and quickly scampered up the steps leading to the truck’s entrance. We talked to the vendors there and one of the first things we learned was about the frequency of the flea market. It occurs every third weekend of every month. “The Library Store on Wheels” was now quite an established store at Artists and Fleas for several months now, despite its true roots being located at the original store in Downtown. The lady we talked to, very kindly, provided us with a business card of the store/truck. Despite explaining our purposes and being more personal, we weren’t able to get anymore information past that.
However, undiscouraged and still with childlike wonder, we moved to the next vendor, who happened to be incredibly engaging and informative with us. Her name is Lucia Reynolds. By explaining our aim to seek and study livable communities outside USC’s campus, Lucia began sharing with us her own journey through her company, “Beautiful Things LA,” in trying to solve the issue of insularity through mobility by bringing the product to the consumer. She shared with us, her observation of the difference between New York (where she was originally from) and Los Angeles. We bonded over the fact that frequently people are trapped in little bubbles, even after they have driven to somewhere new. People tend to stay in the same block of the same cafe that someone might have recommended to them at one time.
The idea of “Beautiful Things LA” is to get people to go outside and away from the computers/internet to realize that the street is not a scary place to stand on (through the appeal of a uniquely curated collection of products). The mother-daughter duo that ran the company also recommended a precedent to us, a book that was published regarding a parallel relationship between Yale and New Haven (like USC vs. South Central). Unfortunately, she didn’t remember the title of the book — but I googled it and found an Yale organization called “No Closed Doors” with a similar mission statement. [edit: The book, I believe is called: The Fence Between Campus and a City]
Lucia also shared with us, her dream of creating a team of trucks that would be able to literally make Los Angeles more walkable, by bringing the “market” to the individual. We are definitely considering this as a possible ideating component.
As the afternoon went on, we talked to nearly half a dozen different vendors at the flea market. And gathered a lot of opinions under the category of mobility. Soham and I concluded that the positive manifestation of trucks was to us an unforeseen solution to the issue of walkability in Livable Communities (which was a point we had brought up during last Wednesday’s meeting). Definitely something to think about!
We also further realized that the act of interviewing people is a two-way street. Some people are more hesitant than others. And after interviewing many individuals, Soham and I are (for sure) better conditioned to sensing hesitation from them.
Some vendors also gave us insight on other locations and events we can visit to get a better sense of our design problem.
We even met a graduate of USC who now does illustrations (!) who told us about her ‘gypsy-like’ ways and her love for having a transportable store.
And design entrepreneurs that are also interested in sharing their knowledge of building a start-up store through selling a uniquely curated collection of items.
