Flea market dialogues
I must say that I have always been particularly attracted to flea markets. The diversity of users, the energetic and kind environment, and the rich synergy that vendors and customers create in between tens of flashy stalls crammed with every type of vegetable, fruit or second-hand clothes and antiques you can imagine of is so surprising that it makes you forget everything else for a few of hours. But then, they just disappear from the streets like nothing ever happened week after week.
For that, flea markets are such a unique, chaotic, and extraordinary location for ethnographic studies. A variety of aromas, flavours and sounds join into a carnival of senses that openly invite you to be participant of the experience, even its just for observing and enjoying the walk. Markets surely improve “the ‘dailyness’ of urban life: those routines, habits, behaviours and objects that seem to allow much of city life to cohere”. (Latham & McCormack, 2007)
Nevertheless, this is not the reality for everybody. I am certainly talking about the locals as the “background” people that live in the residential buildings where the market covers
with its big inviting stalls and awnings. As they do have their own responsibilities to attend, residents are not always interested in being a part of the market’s dynamic, so to avoid the hustle and bustle, they must adapt and change their usual paths due the installation of the market in the shared street. “Being together” is also a matter of body training, a “melee” with others in the city spaces, a habit (and indifference) to sounds, smells, different skin colours, heterogeneous ways of understanding what proximity or distance is. (Lancione, 2016)
Socio-spatial context
As I first introduced my passion for flea markets, when I moved to Milano last September, I had the urge to find one near my house, and after a quick research I found that the ‘Mercattino Setimanale Moretto da Brescia’ held every Monday was only a 20 minute walk away and very close to the university.
I was that excited that I decided to go one day after classes through Via Giuseppe Colombo, and to my amazement, two trucks were sort of creating an entrance and blocking the view of the street from Piazza
Flea market dialogues focuses on the way a neighbourhood and a temporary flea market coexit and negotiate the urban space once a week. What boundaries do vendors have between themselves and the public space they use? How the locals adapt to the organisation of the market? A research on the everyday situation of a market allows us to reflect on the most mundane, in another words, the ordinariness of urban tapestry.
Giuseppe Occhialini [Photo 1]. As I passed through, it felt like I entered in another world: a wide and miscellaneous setting of fresh produce kiosks opened in front of me in both sidewalks: meat, fish, Italian cheese, fruits, vegetables, spices, pickles and nuts, teas and coffees were arranged attractively and offered to all kinds of people in what I like to call “an organized mess” throughout 300 straight meters up to Via Beato Angelico.
The surroundings make the atmosphere even more cosy feeling; accompanied by trees on both sides that offer a pleasant shade, to the right, beautifully restored and colorful single-family houses extend along the street in front of the campus Colombo of the Politecnico di Milano. This encounter intensifies the social interactions between young and older generations while shopping and strolling in the market, strengthening a sense of community and cultural identity in Città Studi.
The flea, as its name refers, also branches perpendicularly in Via Moretto da Brescia, a much open and wider roadway with spacious sidewalks where predominates a residential area with modern buildings. That’s when I realised the organisation of the market is logical and thought-out, because here belongs the stalls of clothing, accessories, crafts and utensils, home supplies, hygiene and cleaning products, and other goods in both sidewalks, which use more space by vendor than the grocery ones. [Photo 2]
Having said that, profiles of customers differ thanks to the cross-shaped plan of the market and the division into each branch according to the type of produce mentioned above. The edibles section concentrates middle aged people and couples that, based on their amiable interactions with the sellers, seem to frequent the market
and in result, to know each other. Old ladies also play an important role, carrying their shopping cart alone or in company of a friend. In contrast, the clothing side is busy with groups of younger people such as university students or people in their early 30s strolling in each stall and looking for the best deal in jackets, sweaters, or old T-shirts. Moreover, we can see families with kids interested in clothes and little toys for them.
“An opportunity for diverse peoples to come together to do their business and also to engage in “folk ethnography” that serves as a cognitive and cultural base on which people construct behaviour in public.”
(Anderson, 2011)
Implicit boundaries
As an outsider, I find it very interesting how there is always a scene to be part of and to observe, particularly how vendors set up their kiosks and have their fixated spot in the market in a way that feels unspoken but peaceful. Like every community, they seem to have establish internal rules about boundaries in order to habit and respect each space. In Via Giuseppe Colombo, the food section, each vendor defines their physical territory by placing the stand around a tree, and curiously not in between two of them as it may seem to be more logical, but it does work as the separation is enough to position the trucks and the extra piles of cardboard boxes in the sidewalk or leaning on the tree trunk used.
However, in Via Moretto da Brescia, as it lacks enough urban elements to define the space of each stall, I noticed that they create the boundaries by using the surrounding residential buildings, specifically the distribution of entrances (both the main and garage doors) which they shall respect either way for locals to walk in and out their houses. So, that way you can clearly differentiate each
stand although they look similar because they sell the same type of products, and the entrances are free to the roadway, without any stall that overshadows them. [Photo 3]
In brief, the flea market uses practices of territoriality of the public environment by using existing elements to achieve their own organisation, where said elements assume new roles as actors of the physical space. Trees, light poles, and traffic signals are used by vendors to help them install their big parasols and distribute its weight, whereas unused parts of the façades such as blinded doors, windows at ground level or just the brick walls are occupied by boxes, unsold food, garbage, metallic staircases, clothing racks and even small workplaces [Photo 4]. There are no limits to the possible uses of objects. Put this way, no difference exists between, say, a traffic light and a window: theoretically, they are both ‘open to the same set of possible interpretations’ (Hutchby, 2001).
The background - what goes unnoticed
The edges of the flea market are not only defined by the distribution of stalls, but also by the relationship with the exteriors, where the sidewalks take on a key role. Sidewalks, in the context of a market, function as a back area as parked trucks and work vehicles together with stacks of boxes define a continuous temporary barrier, creating an alternative, almost hidden, transition route for people with different needs than shopping.
Although it is true that the continuity of the pathway occasionally gets impossible to walk through due to the amount of stuff accumulated (mostly concentrated in corners at both ends of the streets), surprisingly, the vendors of the clothing part respect the existent sidewalk more than I thought: they place their vans at an average distance of four steps
1. Entrance of “Moretto da Brescia” weekly market
from the façade, a minimum width that allows passage. Along with the gap that connects the access of the entrances to the roadway, it creates a narrow labyrinth where residents of the neighbourhood that have no option but to pass through the flea can mainly escape from the chaos and the crowded market in its peak hours.
In this tight pedestrian service-roadlookalike situation, every person is inevitably polite to each other as you encounter people in your opposite direction who, just like you, are trying to get to their destination faster by going unnoticed. At the back, there is a different speed in comparison with the market’s flow; people patiently wait, interchange a kind “permesso” and “grazie”, or even encounter their fellow neighbour and get a chance to have a quick chat [Photo 5]. Many pedestrians move about guardedly, dealing with strangers by employing elaborate facial and eye work, replete with smiles, nods, and gestures geared to carve out an impersonal but private zone for themselves. (Anderson, 2011) I find this dynamic very captivating because sometimes the footpath gets so tricky that it would be much easier to walk inside the market, but they choose to not get involved: mostly because they are in a hurry to go to work or school, and understandably dodging people first thing in the morning may not be the most pleasant setting. People like to be comfortable. In that way, sidewalks have become points of entrance for understanding the complexity of urban life.
Oppositely, food sellers have different practices. In addition to parking their trucks, they use the sidewalk as a rear “storage room” for unsold vegetables and tons of boxes, which makes the footpath mostly unwalkable since they tend to occupy the whole space, not allowing an easy accessibility to the adjacent homes. Even though it is messy, the civilized behaviour and respect that characterize the people in
a flea market is still present; a couple of vendors saw me intending to go behind the stall and asked me if I their stuff was disturbing me and if I wanted them to open the way. Such neutral social settings, which no one group expressly owns but all are encouraged to share, situated under this kind of protective umbrella, represent a special type of urban space, a peculiar zone that every visitor seems to recognize, appreciate, and enjoy. (Anderson, 2011)
As here the primary function of the sidewalk as a circulation lane is gone, new activities start to raise at the background of the stalls, such as vendors placing a workplace for cutting and sorting out products, people resting or even having space for their pets [Photo 6 & 7]. A place is a function of the performance of objects, not just of patterns of social behaviour; it exists as a consequence of the entanglement of people, nonhumans, material objects, ideas, norms, and technologies. (Laura Lietro, 2017). Which brings us again to the topic of territoriality, and how a public space can have a private or semi-private connotation that is ruled by visible territorial markers. In fact, every time I was in the back of a stall to see around and walk, the seller would get quite nervous asking me what I was doing and what the photos were for, making me feel like I was invading their owned space.
Final negotiations
Until now, through a journey of observations of a market’s multisensory contrasts, I wanted to explain the complexity in which commercial and residency activities coexist in terms of physical but ambiguous borders and barriers. In the open space of a flea market, people are civil and polite to one another, respecting the putative individual aura surrounding every person and defining the public conveyance as an
utterly neutral space where people are generally on good behaviour and will just leave other people be.
(Anderson, 2011) But finally, I would like to introduce the last topic about the interaction spaces offered by two parties focused on commercial activity: the market itself with the local businesses such as bars and cafes.
Bars, restaurants, and cafes contribute to shaping the urban landscape as they are reference points for residents, reinforcing the feeling of belonging to the neighbourhood, of appropriation and recognition of the space as their own. The presence of these establishments creates routes in the neighbourhoods through which the residents pass, allowing the meeting beyond the interior of the premises, and, therefore, the interaction.
Just like the flea market, commercial businesses play its role in sociability as a space where neighbourhood life develops, both from the point of view of coexistence and of the conflictive situations that can occur around it. But the role of commerce in neighbourhood life is not limited to what happens “inside doors”, rather has a more attractive aspect outside. As Photo 8 shows, that statement come to real life as I came across the terrace of a bar that felt like it was inside the market itself, where the back of the clothing stall, sharing the same sidewalk and almost the same awning, seems a “public stage” where the people sitting at the bar have a privileged place to see the scene of the market, how people try on clothes or engage in a conversation with each other. They take part in the common pastime of “people watching,” for “all kinds” of folk are represented.
(Anderson, 2011)The narrowness between establishments and the stalls’ backstage indeed contribute to the organization and cleanliness of the sidewalk, making it competent in its
usual functions as an urban element in the same way as the front of the houses: passage and accessibility. Timing also rules an implicit paper between both parts, as they have the same setting hour, 7:30am. Unpacking the sidewalk as the key rear area of a market, then, we find a wide range of possibilities for all kinds of social interactions. They are spaces where the residents of the neighbourhood have reciprocal dynamics, either in their role as merchants, customers, or passers-by.
As a conclusion of my ethnographic research of the hidden dialogues inside a flea market and its surroundings, space does build over time. The variety of use and development of the market space is constructed by the people with different background who live and work in it. At the end, their habits, cultures, flavours, and aromas strengthen the way in which life in the market is experienced.
Bibliography
Anderson E. (2011), The Cosmopolitan Canopy. Race and Civility in Everyday Life, W.W. Norton & Company.
Lieto L. (2017), “How material objects become urban things” / City 21 (5), pp. 568-579, 21 (5), pp. 568-579
Cranz G. (2016), Ethnography for Designers, Routledge.
