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A day at the Hartville Flea Market
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- The Hartville Flea Market
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- Matt Pryor
I spent the day at the Hartville flea market looking at everything from bottle caps to stun guns. The flea market is great place to find everything you've ever wanted, while getting in some great people watching.
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I spent the day at the Hartville flea market looking at everything from bottle caps to stun guns. The flea market is great place to find everything you've ever wanted, while getting in some great people watching.
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James Reiss
Posted on October 23, 2008 at 04:00 PM | Permalink
Review of The Hartville Flea Market
Grungier than its West Coast cousin, the swap meet -- larger than yard and garage sales -- that timeworn icon, the flea market, shows no signs of vanishing from small towns east of the Mississippi.
With his customary TLC for off-the-road, not quite off-the-wall Americana, Matt Pryor takes us back to Ohio. The Hartville Flea Market has been a renowned blotch on the landscape of the Buckeye State for a good 65 years. Although I sometimes wonder why-O why-O why-O did I ever leave Ohio, Pryor's portrait of Hartville's huge outdoor assembly of 1000 vendors makes me itch for classier venues. If you're not as allergic to fleas as I and you yearn to hear vendors, like "tent salesmen . . . sell homemade moonshine and pass it off as a cure-all elixir"; if you long to "find the most random items and meet the most random people" -- you'll cotton to Pryor's out-of-work guitarist strumming for a day's wages in Hartville. This is his second Saturday; his previous Saturday earned him $49.19 -- before taxes.
As Pryor states, "Whether you're looking for a spool of yarn or a taxidermy deer head or just in the mood to people-watch," you'll collect enough impressions from this slightly bizarre drop-in about a bazaar to last you till next weekend, when you'll hit the road for Hartville to top off your antique bottle collection with the bluest glass beauty ever mentioned in PRX.