The Williamsburg-based Artists & Fleas will now be a permanent fixture in Manhattan, in a former loading dock at Chelsea Market at the crossroads of Chelsea and the Meatpacking District.
The 4,000-square-foot space, tucked under the High Line at the corner of 15th Street and 10th Avenue, has a semi-permanent and rotating cast of vintage clothing and crafts vendors — carefully curated by Artists & Fleas’ proprietors, Ronen Glimer and Amy Abrams.
Artists & Fleas began on a whim in 2003, when urged on by artistic friends, Glimer leased a parking lot from two cousins with a sausage business who coincidentally had flea markets on Long Island.
“Amy and I love markets and love to travel,” Glimer said.
They began running weekend markets in East Williamsburg before finding their current location at 70 N. Seventh St. “We walk the line between being a flea market and an alternative boutique because we are indoors and permanent,” Glimer said.
For the 2011 holidays, Glimer and Abrams tried a two-week pop-up store at Chelsea Market, owned by Jamestown. “It gave us a taste of what it would feel like to activate it,” said Glimer. They returned for three-month and six-month stints before recently signing a lease.
“There is a wide range of items and I pay attention to price points. The customers also have to be able to carry it home,” Glimer said. The cost for a vendor is about $200 a day. Food items are verboten because Glimer and Abrams do not want their vendors’ vintage fabrics to “smell of tacos.”
Next stop is Los Angeles, where the duo recently opened in LA’s emerging Downtown Arts District. “It’s an experiment and our intention is to be there the third weekend of every month,” Glimer said.
