Fine art for 7 bucks
I was determined when I got home yesterday, to find out the origin of the phrase flea market .
According to Oxford Dictionary experts:
Flea Market comes from the French marche aux puces, a name originally given to a market in Paris. The fleas were thought to be in the goods, because they were of the kind to attract vermin. The earliest English use we have found dates from 1922.
Went up north to Caesar Creek. It was like a small mirrored copy of the market we went to last weekend, saturated with the same type of merchants:
- overpriced used videogames/movies
- t-shirts with iron-on hunting scenes
- plenty of imported knock-off products
- another scientology booth
- one vendor (pictured above) that actually sold old junk. He even did it with some sideshow air, complete with bowler hat and a mechanical arm to grab things way up high
Add one tacky framed print into my hands. Oh, and a jar of chow chow from a booth that sold old fashioned candy and whatnot.
Hmm… I wonder if that painting is a Dichefski.
I went to a flea market once and I was a bit worried about where they got their stuff from. It just looked like they either took it out from someone’s trash or robbed someone’s house. Cool stuff in fleamarkets though.
Today I was editing some pages on my website when I come across the phrase – ‘flea market’. I thought it sound demeaning and make the serious entreprenuers who run the stalls/booths look dirty and crooked. In Zimbabwe, where I am writing from, you can get great stuff (mostly Chinese) at these places at better prices than mainstream retail shops. A good number of people have found meaningful employment running the stalls. The phrase is also similar to ‘black’ market. Some of the black people (majority of the populations)here are worried about ‘who the hell create these phrases’… Some now call it the parallel and not black market.