Happy Birthday, Saturday Market

I wrote a piece for the Weekly, but they didn't use it. Oh well, I wasn't really using those two days anyway. I'll just drop it here for all of you. The long version. The short version was easier to read and better writing, but I'm in the mood to put the whole thing in, regardless of the rules it breaks.

They could've at least announced the Watch Party. Yeah, I got denied by unemployment too. Spending the day in the garden.

For the Weekly

This Saturday, May 9, 2020, will mark the 50^th Anniversary of the Eugene Saturday Market, the oldest continually operating weekly craft market in the US. Close observers will notice that Saturday Market is not there in the familiar central location of the downtown Park Blocks. But even though Coronavirus has postponed the Market season, there is no hiding the real Saturday Market: the community.

Each rain-or-shine Saturday event─and over 50 years, that counts up to between 1500 and 2000 open days─is a surprisingly different day from any other. The combination of artisans who occupy those several hundred booth spaces is similar, but a special flavor that includes not only the weather, but the concoction of idiosyncrasies, charms, and spicy creations of thousands of people, acting in synch to present a different dish. That satisfying meal won’t be easily destroyed even if the virus turns this season into the nightmare we all dread.

But we’ve weathered storms before. While opening on the first Saturday in April seems constant, there were years in the beginning when there was no assurance for the members that selling would happen. Bad weather or lack of money brought uncertainty, so many years began on the first weekend in May. The second season, 1971, the Market did not open until June 19th, as it had outgrown the mall location and negotiations with the county commissioners took extra time. That season could have been brief: the commissioners pulled the plug at the end of August. They feared a hippie scene developing on the Courthouse Plaza, and didn’t want it there. The community, in its dramatic way, put on black armbands and mounted a protest and ensuing negotiations eventually resulted in a continued season, but on the Butterfly Lot.

Each year there are between 500 and 800 members, with enthusiastic new ones appearing while some old ones move on to other endeavors. Thousands of businesses have started at the Market. Scratch any local family history and you will find a member or two. In their shops, kitchens and living rooms, your favorite crafters are still making their crafts. Some have turned to mask-making and are giving away or selling hundreds of finely sewn face protection. Many of the food artisans are planning strategies for take-out when we are able to enter a transition period of essential sales as the Lane County Farmers Market is doing now.

The organization itself spent the last year upgrading their website services to include a new member portal (eugenesaturdaymarket.org) which is gradually populating with photos and profiles of current members, and a Facebook Online Marketplace (https://www.facebook.com/groups/eugenesaturdaymarketmakergroup/) now has more than 1200 participating artists and shoppers. Many continuing efforts such as a virtual flip-page version of the guidebook and video interviews on Instagram and other sites on the internet are out there for you to find. Nothing has stopped for the membership of the Market except the actual hand-to-hand transactions that are where the artist meets with the appreciator on common ground.

In 1969 and 1970, when the first group of craftspeople gathered, choosing potter Lotte Streisinger as their spokesperson, the craft renaissance of the alternative culture was in its infancy. The ancient traditions of hand-crafting and bringing products to the central marketplace seemed to be subsiding in the decades of the 1950s and 60s as commercial production and suburban living dominated the retail landscape, but actually the opposite flow of energy was building. Activists and humanists were looking for truth and value in authentic lifestyles and artifacts, expanding from the Arts and Crafts movement of the earlier part of the 20^th century. With the added stressor of the Vietnam war and government scandals, a culture to counter what seemed phony and plastic appealed to a broad spectrum of Americans.

Lotte wasn’t a hippie, and neither were most of her friends; they were serious artists who needed a way to make a living from what they wanted to spend their time doing. Galleries were few and exclusive, and selling locally was much easier than trying to appeal to urban buyers in far-off cities.

As soon as the Market began, it turned out that there were many buyers for the varied products brought downtown. By Christmas of the first year in a narrow alley location by the Overpark, there were 200 sellers and an enthusiastic community of buyers.

The wide-ranging Saturday Market history is full of challenges endured and handled, some occurring repeatedly and others hard to believe. There were dogs and give-away kitties, inappropriate buskers, oddities like too many nails left in the parking spaces, and of course an arson fire in 1982. Not everyone brought joy and cooperation to the marketplace. Many times the interface between the micro-business owners and the established landowners, bureaucracies and enforcement agencies had to be hand-crafted as well. How to sell food in a festival setting was new for the temporary restaurants. Lane County had to work out the relationship of landlord, health inspector, and collaborator with City of Eugene government and the police department and the iconoclasts of the time. The Market’s archived letters and records of public meetings show difficulties in perception and articulation as the new animal of an open market developed itself and worked out its operating rules. Many of those remain constant from the beginning, such as the Maker is the Seller, and an ongoing effort has to be made to adapt to new conditions. The founders didn’t imagine 3-D printers.

Always it was about individuals bringing themselves into a group process. A little-remembered movement for consensus-based decision-making formed the early market governance, and meetings of hundreds of highly invested participants were regularly held. Over time the structure evolved into a representative volunteer board of members, sometimes including people who did not sell but brought needed skills. At present there is a nine-person board, and a staff of about twenty people in various full- and part-time roles. When you see the event, you likely don’t notice the set-up crew, who start at 4:00 in the morning and finish after dark. You don’t see all of the office staff and the support staff of accountants, graphic designers, and ad consultants who are also part of the essential structure. It’s a goal to have the event look like magic.

You wouldn’t know about the dozen volunteer committees ranging from the all-important Budget Committee to the Sustainability Committee who had big plans for Earth Day 2020. The Standards Committee meets twice a month to screen new members and work out the details of the exacting guidelines that cover the multitude of craft categories and items. There are task forces and small groups to create the guidebooks and other promotional opportunities, to work with the City on the Town Square project and other initiatives. A core group of about thirty volunteers works alongside the staff to build into the event the richness of the tapestry that shows itself to you every week.

And then there is you, the person who comes down to the Market as a regular or as a new attendee. Each time you come you play a part in the tableau and there are waves of variety in how that is done. Kids dress up in their fairy wings and garlands, carrying their savings or stuffed animals, throwing pennies into the fountain. Locals with special t-shirts, come to be identified and cool. Kitty ears and wolf tails join the all-black spiked jackets and heavy jeans and tiny little skirts. Tourists come to see it all. Shy or bold, people want to be seen as they are, or as they wish to be; to belong.

Some sold in the past or want to sell in the future, they want to see what’s new or what they reminisce about. The history displays spurred many tales of archaic products, or classic crafts of their day: the wrap-around pants, the macrame, the candle holders of stained glass. Where else can you find the finest tie-dye or the most personal jewelry, made as if just for you? Where else can you look into the eyes of the person who dreamed it?

Best of all, it’s where you come to announce yourself and re-orient your life. When you are engaged, or married, or when you graduate, you stroll the aisles to reward yourself with a ring or dessert. Your favorite food calls you to Opening Day or you come every week to try the newest special. The most

tender life-passage conversations take place at the Market, when a person comes for the first time without their lost partner, or their matured child who just flew from the nest. In the year of 9-ll, which happened right before the start of an otherwise normal Tuesday Farmers’ Market, Mayor Jim Torrey wanted to cancel Saturday’s activities as well as the Eugene Celebration scheduled for that weekend. The legendary Beth Little was not only the general manager of the Saturday Market at that time, but also the chair of the Eugene Celebration board. She carefully helped guide Mayor Torrey in the realization that if only the Friday night party were turned into a vigil for the community to grieve, the normal activities of the Saturday and Sunday in downtown would be an important part of the healing process.

That wisdom of the heart was emblematic of how our community works, through the gathering in our center, with its dependable consistency and authentic, wholistic vulnerability. It was hard to think about investment and retail in such a fraught moment when three thousand had died and life had radically altered for the nation. We are certainly at such a moment on this 50^th Anniversary day when our event will not be happening in the Town Square. We can’t gather.

But we are gathering in a different sense, collecting our values and our passions and patting them into a new shape, gently and gradually as we see what will be possible and what will be important. All of us, the person coming downtown for their first time and the one coming for the thousandth, want to be there, and want to celebrate together. Happily, at a Facebook Watch Party we will watch a 1973 film never widely shown, made by filmmaker Ron Finne with grants from City Room Tax funds and The Oregon Arts Commission. You can watch with us at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_gpmkg2dCI . It shows an innocent young Market in a time that sweetens memory. Join us on Saturday!

The 50^th Season activities in 2019 included highlighting Legacy Performers, craft demonstrations, special history displays and an expanded Founders’ Day, with photo documentation on the website. Our Facebook posts and our Weekly articles are a step apart from our operating reality. It seems a far step at this writing, when no Opening Day is set. The big party was cancelled, but the bigger party is in the planning stages. Creative people from the Saturday Market, the Oregon Country Fair, and the other legacy organizations which include the Wow Hall, White Bird, and many others, have carried forward the work of the visionary founders of Saturday Market. Archives have been opened and polished and when the streets open again, whenever that is, we will all emerge and even if we can’t hug, we will embrace what we have built.

And you will be there, goddess willing and the creek don’t rise. What was built will simply resume, piece by piece or in an explosion of wonderful, intact and as before, constantly changing. No day will be like any other, but the threads of the tapestry have not unraveled. That shimmering glamour over our town just can’t be torn. Smooth as charmeuse, ephemeral as chiffon, slubby as raw silk, we will all, adorned in our Market treasures and with bells on, step on back to 8^th and Oak and we will have our gathering. We won’t settle for anything less. See you when it is safe.