A Sunday Ritual in Georgetown: The Flea

On Sunday mornings in Georgetown, nestled in a parking lot between 35th and Wisconsin Avenue, vendors unload their miscellaneous items and come together to continue a half-century-long weekly tradition: the Georgetown Flea Market. Located at the Hardy Middle School’s parking lot, Georgetown Flea Market welcomes a mixed bag of browsers; art collectors, elderly couples, dog walkers, neighborhood residents, - and as a recent addition- college students. Roaming around the red brick streets in one of Washington’s most affluent neighborhoods, droves of people come to the Georgetown Flea Market to find unique buys.

Before entering the parking lot, some vendors are already lined up along the sidewalk; racks of sports jerseys next to golden frames and engraved mirrors, all accompanied by a Jay-Z song blasting from a vendor’s speaker, creating a chaotic yet intriguing scene. It is a place where everyone can find something for themselves. Whether it be sports jerseys, vintage bags, thrifted clothes, chinas, antiques, jewelry, camera equipment, carpets or paintings. There is a little bit of everything in this flea market, it is merely a hoarder’s paradise.

“You know, they don’t let me put my stuff on the sidewalk, but look at this guy, he laid his paintings all over the street. They told me I was blocking the way. Isn’t this so absurd?” a vendor complained to me, as I browsed through hundreds of his antiques on display.

I looked up at him, then turned around and looked at the set of items he was pointing out to on the sidewalk which belonged to the vendor right next to his booth. He was right, the vendor next-booth had all of his paintings and large-scale items lined along the sidewalk. I told him that I agreed, and it was weird that someone would say such a thing. Then I quickly changed the conversation to the piece of antique I was holding in my hand.

It was an old coffee grinder shaped like a gramophone with a handle. The black paint had chipped and the wood beneath the paint was visible. There was a compartment on the top where you would pour the coffee beans into, and then spin the metal handle to grind the beans. There was a tiny drawer on the bottom of the machine with a golden grip, which you would pull to open the little box that would have the grinded coffee beans ready for brewing.

“If you like that one, I have something else I want to show you. You are going to love this.” the vendor said, as he turned around to walk to the other end of the booth.

He had pale skin with a dark goatee, which was the only piece of hair on his head. He put his big black glasses on his bald shiny head, as he searched for the piece he wanted to show me on the crowded stand that had all sorts of items placed with no particular order.

“Try to open this.” he said, with an excited smile on his face, handing me a wooden box engraved like a pharaoh with earthy pastel colors. The box was like a magic cube; it had various small compartments to it that needed to be rotated in a single way to be unlocked. After a couple minutes of trying, I opened the box, and it was a jewelry organizer with a red velvet interior.

“Good job! Isn’t that very cool? That is one of my favorites from the pieces I brought here today. It is from Egypt dating back to the 1920s!” he said, as he gave me another one of the same boxes to try to open.

He was quirky, and liked to make a lot of jokes. It was after he said “Inshallah!” to one of the customers’ best wishes when I decided to intervene. I could hear a soft Middle Eastern accent in his English, but I was not sure. Then I asked the simplest question that would take me to a wonderland of life stories.

“Where are you from?”

His name was Yusuf, and he was from Pakistan. He had been coming to this flea market for a decade now. He was doing this as a hobby because he was very interested in collecting unique pieces of items that have stories to tell. He knew stories of all the pieces he had.

“I do this because I love it so much, they are all fascinating to me.” Yusuf said as he held an emerald green lamp on one hand and a copper mirrored tray on the other. He placed them in two empty spots on the booth carelessly.

It was not hard to grasp his passion for the items he was selling at the flea market. Yusuf was excited, sometimes so excited that he would turn around and leave in the middle of a conversation because he had seen another customer picking up another piece. He had to tell the story.

A young girl with a bright red jacket and long blond hair picked up a folded hand-held fan that was as big as her forearm, standing at the other end of the long rectangle stand. Her interest caught Yusuf’s eye immediately and he ran to the other end to tell her, “You picked a beautiful one right there.”

It was a windy day, and many vendors were tensely watching over their items to make sure that nothing would fly and break. Yusuf did not care. He was searching for the case of the hand-held fan that was an antique from China, when his sudden and excited hand gestures hit against one of the items and threw off its balance. The wind immediately took a hold of the small glass earring holder and it shattered into pieces on the street.

“Oh well, Nazar!” Yusuf said, as he shrugged and continued to look for the case. He was referring to the Middle Eastern superstitious belief that objects that are gazed at with jealous eyes will break or shatter.

He was actually a mechanical engineer, working in a company that made surveillance cameras for office spaces. Yusuf was an engineer for the week, a flea market vendor during the weekend, and a collectibles enthusiast for a lifetime.

As for the customers, people who come to the Georgetown flea market are from all walks of life. Art collectors out for a hunt, neighborhood residents taking a stroll, university students looking for cheaper and sustainable buys, tourists who lost their way from Georgetown’s M Street, and of course, politicians, perhaps having a day off.

The flea market began in 1972, founded by a then-recent law school graduate named Michael Sussman, waiting to take the bar exam. The Hardy Middle School is the fourth site of the flea market, operating here since 1988. The flea had not been on good terms with the city’s zoning officials, and they had a near miss of losing their space in early 2000s, due to a complaint that the market is a business run in a residentially zoned area.

Sussman can be easily spotted on most Sundays, surrounded by antiques and oddments at the outdoor bazaar. Seeing how the visitors have changed over the years, Sussman says he likes to see how the crowd is becoming younger.

“Folks who came here used to be mostly elderly. They would come with a higher budget looking for specific paintings, carpets, or house furniture to decorate their Georgetown houses. So, the vendors brought more antiques and collectables to their table. Now, college students make up almost half of our visitors. And they are not interested in antiques as much. So vendors play it accordingly.” said Sussman, pointing to the group of college students browsing through stacks of records.

Sustainable living and supporting small and local businesses became a popular trend among the Gen Z, especially in a post-Covid era. These trends popularized the rooted flea markets to a new crowd of people: students. What they find is unique, recycled, affordable and beneficial for the local economy. What else can a college student ask for?

“I make and sell scented candles and jewelry. They might not entertain the affluent crowd very much, but they sure do the college students. And I love them too!” said Linda, an elderly woman who sat behind boxes of candles stacked on one another on a small desk by the lot’s entrance. She was a retired tailor who worked in a store down the street that closed about five years ago. Now, she makes candles and silver jewelry, and comes to her new work space that is just a couple blocks up from where she worked for two decades.

Inside the parking lot, all vendors are lined up with their booths set up in front of their cars. Almost all trunks are open, they treat their tailgates as tents to hide from the sun, or sometimes, the rain. Some sellers bring their own tents and set up every Sunday morning to put clothes, jewelry and other items on display. From a distance, many booths resemble one another; accessories inside big boxes, housewares like plates, glasses and vases with delicate accents of gold rimming or hand-painted patterns lined up alongside a velvet tablecloth. But once taking a closer glimpse, the items are as diverse as the crowd of sellers who collect and bring them in with care.

“It’s actually 40, but I will make it 30 to you my friend!” said another vendor, pointing at a trinket shaped like an elephant with blue and white patterns on it. The bargaining phrase came out with a thick accent as the vendor took one last puff from his cigarette and threw it to the ground, stepping on it with his worn out brown moccasins. He made the deal, and sold the little elephant to an elderly couple with a big smile on his face.

“Come back next week!” he said, waving his dusty and callused hand as they walked away from the booth. He had one of the biggest booths in the flea market, three long stands pieced together like a U-shape, displaying a wide array of items from paintings to camera equipment.

I stood in the middle of his booth and started glancing at an eight-piece coffee cup collection that reminded me of traditional Turkish patterns. He watched me from a distance, keeping one eye on me as he unloaded boxes from the back of his car. Soon after he approached me, kindly asking if there was something particular I was looking for that he could help with.

“Are these Turkish coffee cups?” I asked, reaching toward one of the small cups with Ottoman-style tulip patterns in red, green and various shades of blue.

“Yes, yes, they are vintage Turkish coffee cups. How did you know?” he asked, with a higher-pitched voice. I told him I was Turkish, and after a long pause and a silent stare, he opened his arms and gave me a hug. He was Turkish too.

Yılmaz had been setting up at the flea market every Sunday for more than 20 years. The items he brings to the flea market are only a small and curated portion of his collection. He has two storages full of antique and vintage collectables that he sells online.

“It’s my full time job, and I like to be present in every environment where I can sell my stuff. Nothing comes without hard work, and I’ve worked hard my whole entire life” Yılmaz said, before he dove into his life story of how he found himself in Washington, D.C. from a rural eastern Turkish city called Kars.

Yılmaz was born and raised in an Alevi family in eastern Turkey, then moved to Istanbul in the 1970s to attend university, which he noted to be a very uncommon level of education to get from where he grew up. One day, Yusuf saw a newspaper ad on Turkey’s rooted Cumhuriyet newspaper that announced a raffle for university students in Turkey to earn a green card and move to the U.S. He didn’t speak any English then, so he took the documents and forms that he needed to fill to a friend who knew English.

“I made my friend fill out the forms both for me and for my brother. I put both of our names in the raffle. I won, but he did not. So I packed my bags and left. I haven’t been back ever since.” Yılmaz said, avoiding eye contact. “I lost hope for my country, there is nothing there for me anymore. I want to remember it just like how I left it.” he said, staring at the vintage tennis racket he had been running his dusty fingers through as he told his story.

He came straight to Washington, where he got a job as a waiter, and then he went to graduate school in Maryland.

“I’ve always had the mind of a tradesman, I always knew it. So I started off with a few pieces, worked very hard, and then the next thing I know is I have a business of my very own.”

Yılmaz said he does not bring his most valuable collectibles to the flea market, and that he sells them online. But his booth was already furnished with items of all shapes and sizes; separate stand for old cameras, camera lenses, grips and tripods, another stand for houseware items like porcelain plate sets, clay vases and some other wooden engraved trinkets and boxes, and another one equipped with antique paintings from China to Iran. It was a feast for the eyes.

“I’ll tell you, there are people from all places here. All places, see, that guy is from India. He comes here with his wife and sells carpets. There is another Turkish guy over the corner. He sells clothes. They are all really good people, and I am one of the oldest here. Everyone comes up here every Sunday, the weather is not a deterrent. Buyers come too, they come and they buy.” Yılmaz said, gazing over the parking lot with a half-smile as he spoke.

The sense of community was apparent: vendors sat side by side in front of their booths on plastic chairs as they drank tea, smoked, and talked with one another.

A wall mirror shaped like a sun layed on top of a truck’s windshield, covered with a blue velvet piece of clothing. Behind the truck, on a tiny stand, books that were gift-wrapped in newspapers stacked on top of one another. A sticker on top of the newspaper wrap read, A blind date with a book. We tell you the genre, year published, & a quote from a stranger’s online review as a clue… I picked a journalism memoir from 1997 that had a little note said, *Pulitzer Prize Winner*. I later learned that it was the Personal History of the Washington Post’s Kathleen Graham.

Suddenly, the sky seemed gloomy and the moving clouds began to hide the sun shining above Georgetown’s second-hand wonderland. Silent taps of drizzle falling on my new book wrapped in newspaper became louder and faster. When I lifted my head and looked around, vendors were working like a beaver, trying to cover their items with plastic, cloth, or cardboard. Visitors started to run around hastily, looking for a refuge to avoid the looming downpour.

“I guess they will be closing early today.” the girl in front of me said to her friend as they took quick steps to make their way out of the parking lot, holding her denim coat above her head to stay dry. The rain stopped in about half an hour. Vendors, who had been waiting inside their cars, came out immediately and uncovered their items, picking up right where they left off. The dispersed crowd also found their way back into the parking lot shortly after. Then, a Jay-Z song started to fill up the street again. That’s when I remembered what Yılmaz had said, the weather is not a deterrent for us.