The South End Welcomes SoWa Open Market With Open Arms

Spring is here and art is in bloom.

Throughout the Greater Boston area, creativity is festering in abundance. May Fair in Harvard Square, Open Studios, film festivals, new exhibits… it’d be impossible to take it all in. So, while you carefully pick and choose how to spend your leisure time, keep in mind that the , which reopens this Sunday at 10:00 a.m., is an excellent way to gain one-stop exposure to a literal boatload of crafts and vendors. This will be the market’s 8^th season; last year, some 140 businesses participated in the opening.

“The best thing about the Open Market is that it brings more exposure to the sexiest part of the city,” owner Frank Campanale told me over the phone this week.

“It’s more exposure, more people coming here to enjoy what the area has to offer… they get to wander around and be pleasantly surprised with how far this region of the city has come.”

Campanale’s nearby Harrison Ave. showroom is focused on Latin-inspired interior decor and furniture, which he realizes isn’t what visitors coming to the Open Market are likely after. This, however, doesn’t detract from his enthusiasm.

“I think a tremendous improvement to the market would be if all the foot traffic was required to pass directly in front of my door,” he joked. “But in all seriousness, it’s not exactly my clientele. But that certainly doesn’t make it any less of an asset to the neighborhood.”

Campanale said the one thing he’d like to see more of is farmers markets and food in general. Although the folks at SoWa were unavailable for comment, (they must be swamped), it appears that they read his mind: there’s a separate registration page for farmers markets on the organization’s website this year, in addition to a list of sixteen participating food-trucks peddling everything from cupcakes to grilled cheese to pita pockets, bbq and beyond.

But food or no food, the value of the market and all it encompasses is insurmountable.

“GTI, the development company that manages the SoWa galleries and the space the Open Market occupies, provides a tremendous service to the city,” Campanale said. “They have an unwavering vision for the neighborhood and it just keeps getting better… it sets a great example for the rest of the city. We owe them a debt of gratitude.”

Thinking about crafts vendors got me strolling down memory lane.  

As soon as I was old enough to drive I began barreling down the Bronx River Parkway and into Manhattan as often as possible. One of my regular destinations was an open market in the lot beside Tower Records which sat at 4^th& Broadway in The Village. At the time I had little grasp of the volume of effort that goes into such an event—the juried applications, preparations, table fees and specifications vendors need meet to just come and sell their stuff.

But one thing I clearly recognize now is that the coolest things I bought during that time--rings, drawings, woven wallets, pendants and so forth--were unique, irreplaceable items from those vendors. The junk I picked up next door at Tower? That's all been reduced to a bunch of disposable digital files.

You do the math…