Fancy people at fancy pop-up markets & no-fancy sales

 POPPING ABOUT

 

Social Sunday, with a touch of commerce

 

We walk into a Sunday social where everyone is trying to sell something and no one is interested in buying anything. This social Sunday pop-up bazaar is meant for the well-heeled. Perfect mix in this new world of trying everything – even if it’s at a loss; a willing martyr at the altar of business. What’s the loss? You can help yourself to an entrepreneur tag even if it was for just one Sunday.

 

The Cave

So we enter…

 

The dressing up for the occasion is the first thing that strikes you – stressed jeans, velvet boots, lose hanging outfits - all those cool threads pulled out from wardrobes that were bought months ago in a moment of unhinged gush at some hippy market – held at a modern day glitzy shopping mall. The threads and outfits that were long confined to the pile of “wish I had an occasion to wear this”, and now pulled out for this social Sunday.

 

Sum Total

There’s only three categories in full bloom for ‘sale’ at the pop-up; Trinkets, clothes and cookies. What else would you need in life?

 

It strikes me that this entire jamboree – faithfully repeated yearly for the sake of confidence-building (or face-saving) - resembles more like kids playing shop in an Enid Blyton story – all cute and no cash. “I will ….ummm…(searching around) exchange a glass of my special lemonade for one necklace of beads.”

 

 

Perfect Pairing

There’s a Goth chick (the Goth get-up confined to black lip color and a dead-eye look to go with it), and her friend. This friend is getting all the attention – she’s tucked into a tight top providing a beatific view of healthy genes, a skirt stretched to the knees and beyond, a smooth tight grey skirt – like a vertical meteor.

You can almost touch the desperation to get noticed - the lessons to stand out in a crowd must’ve come from the fashion might of the Kardashians, with their rallying cry, “Stuff it to shape it”. The Goth chick’s pal is well aware she’s stolen this fashion-attention march, and is now twisting forever to greet all overtly friendly faces that smile at her. The chaps are glad to be seen exchanging familiarity with the Goth’s pal. Unfortunately for the Goth, the pal is tall, svelte and is displaying her back. The Goth thing isn’t working this Sunday.

 

Looking coolly detached has a high premium around here.

 

 

A Pause In the Fair

You look around and there’s all these extra handshakes, even mistaken greetings – an overbearing familiarity, long stretched out goodbyes…as if there’s gonna be a lull of a decade before you bump into the familiar lot all over again.

 

At the door, just where the air is parted from the humid one outside, you’re accosted by pimped-out black-clad gals pushing, “…lucky coupons with hourly prizes,” into your palm. I pass the offer, saying I’ve had too much luck lately.

 

The other thing thick in this air is the polite interest in everything on display and with a purposeful ignorance of who’s manning the bean counter. You’ll do well to probe and poke and do the opposite – not reach out for your cash. You’ll be paying double for something that you never wanted.

 

I spot a familiar face. Unfortunately for both of us; we are an un-intending buyer and a hopeful seller, we make eye contact. I saunter and do the normal. What follows is a social ritual. We wind it up in good time and I move on to the next without having bought any goodies. My gain is someone else’s loss.

 

Everywhere this crowd stops, they are hoping to establish that corner as their own – the social version of pissing dogs marking territories – there’s a purpose to their walks, a place to head to as if they had come on a pilgrimage and now’s the time to claim their corners. You can see animated huddles everywhere – with the energies of small band of African rebel fighters. It would harden your belief that social bonding is being revived after it went missing at the turn of the century.

 

I spot one such Afro huddle that’s outlasted the initial familiarity. The radiation of friendliness is coming only from one side of the duo, and this looks worse than a line-up at the slammer. One of them is laying out the goods thick - references of neighbors, friends, and acquaintances, but there’s no hook in that. Finally, the one who’s selling finds a relief, “That’s a traditional lamp,” pointing to a traditional lamp that could only be a traditional lamp.

It is a brimming Petri dish of social uneasiness.

 

This whole battlefield is desperately trying to establish connections that seem to have evaporated eons ago. In return, there’s polite acceptance of the virtues of a traditional lamp; its skin is felt, its thickness is appreciated and its glow is praised. That’s it. No commerce. All that time spent in getting familiar and nothing got sold.

 

Tribal Meet

Then you notice, there’s more painted faces at the pop-up than at a gathering of warring tribes.  By now you’ve wizened up to this; everything is a put-on. This is the stage for most to preen and pirouette and sashay their social selves – damn the commerce.  You’ve put on so much make-up that if you had to pause a moment to listen to the urgent nudging’s of your inner voice – one that you’ve gladly surrendered over to the babble of social media noise – you’d have taken heed. Instead, you took heel – straight to this social fest.

 

Sky Scanner

Everyone’s scanning the crowds with these loaded blank stares, hoping to be the first to be recognized. That precarious balance that comes with only studied patience. To hold back that look of familiarity when all your synapses are telling you, “That’s a familiar face, you idiot!”  (the eyes give it away). And you hold on to your sufficiently cool blank look. It helps. You get recognized and greeted first. Then, you respond. A delayed response.

 

The crowds are so edgy that when that familiarity is established, the hugs and handshakes could achieve world peace in a jiffy – never mind that tall building in New York.

 

You ask, “How’s it going?” indicating the sales and she tells you, “You know quite well.” The surprise in all this is for you to gulp cos you can see the counter is still loaded and so are the boxes of extras – all unsold. The sellers are hunched studying their cellphones – probably hoping to find a hashtag linked to their stall, or at least to this damn Social Sunday.

 

Just when you are getting over this…

 

Cool Luke

There’s a chap with a wide display of bow-ties. Yup! He’s selling these bow-ties. We are in South of France, didntchaknow? His solid pal must’ve been the rock of encouragement telling him, “Brad (or Fred), you’ll be a standout - dude!” The entreaties must’ve melted Brad (or Fred) right where he was slumped on his bean bag in his bedroom, checking his Twitter feed.

 

Right now, he cuts a sorry forlorn figure at the pop-up market, a puppy left in the rain after getting all the attention from the teenage girl gang.

 

Most foot-draggers at this social Sunday seem to go out of the way to avoid being anywhere close to this bow-tie stall. Like it would affect the Brad (or Fred) –he’s made of sterner stuff, fed constantly from the validations of his bulging social media.  

 

 

Cooler Duke

I cross paths with a chap who’s walking extra calm and with a notch of put-on nonchalance; he’s wearing a bow tie. And checked shorts and dark-framed glasses. Turn to page 23 of Fashion And You.

 

This has to be the chap who advised Brad (or Fred) to set up that stall of bow-ties. He has three gals trailing in his wake – he must be their go-to, free-for-all, fashion adviser.

 

Oil Tanker

The head organiser of this Social Sunday is pacing the point at the north end of the large air-conditioned hall – it’s an important point. Like a port of call.

 

The announcement area is the only busy spot in this deceptively crowded hall of commerce. In case the social media crowd feels like fish outta water, there’s a handy hashtag - displayed across a large banner on the stage. As if anyone needed a reminder where they wasted a good Sunday, not even social media has taken notice despite the push of the hash.

 

 

My Heart Will Go On…

The crooners are spot-on, one of them could lose his accent – it would be far more on-the-spot. There’s one squeamish chap lip-syncing with for-display, pride. It’s taking him an effort not to put his palm on his heart and sway with the rhythm. The wholesome cool gal by his side is preening at her mobile screen, a dainty colored finger nail jabbing and sliding.

 

Kitchen

Then there’s this rush for food at the pop-up as if this was the end of the Christian fasting season. Cool to be seen chugging beer early in the evening. This is tea time, mind you. If you found a table to put that plate on in that rush for nothing, it saves you the embarrassment of having to loll around standing in all that walking and lolling space.

 

Once you find that table just abandoned, there’s a spring in your step cos’ you now have a destination and that means you’ve beaten the hordes to claim your little kingdom on a canopied table for four. Festive season is open. Hooray, get out your picnic basket and sip on those cool cans of cheap beer and you’ve arrived on a Sunday evening. Way out, hombres.

-end-