The bustling crowd rushes from one booth to another, scouting for the best vintage items of the day.
Conversations echo within each tent as patrons attempt to barter for the best deals and lowest prices, while eager customers sit on the ground swimming through bins of recycled clothes.
Customers of all ages, styles and backgrounds carry heavy bags with vintage clothes or trinkets that weigh them down.
The moment you entered The Drunken Flea at The Burl you were transported into a world of vintage. This event is a curated vintage pop-up market put on by Wearhouse Vintage every summer, fall and spring.
As The Drunken Flea has expanded, the pop-up has 50 vendors this year. This increase has given Shanda Snyder, founder of The Drunken Flea, the opportunity to create a beautiful community within the event.
Looking further into the lens of vintage, the backbone of events like The Drunken Flea are the reason why communities can find passion in places like vintage. Shanda Snyder began this pop-up in 2019 with only nine vendors.
As The Drunken Flea hosts its third and final event of the year on Oct. 12, many customers come to find their individuality through vintage pieces.
One customer, Isabelle Morgan, a Lexington native, has been to The Drunken Flea two times in the past. She said she keeps coming back due to her love of vintage clothing.
“It’s just something worn and used and given new life,” Morgan said.
Not only is vintage a component of why people attend, but the community aspect is also a big part of why people keep returning to pop-ups like this.
The Drunken Flea has an army of supporters ready to battle for its honor, one such customer is Gentry Needham, a freshman at the University of Kentucky.
“This is a quick way to meet a lot of community members and kind of interact with the people who love clothes,” Needham said.
While the swarms of customers grasp the attention of any bystander, the true hidden gems of The Drunken Flea are the vendors.
Vendors are constantly working from early in the morning to late at night on the days of these pop-ups, not counting the hours upon hours spent sourcing products and curating their image.
Charlie Brigantae, a clothing vendor at the pop-up said he spends “a lot of long hours sourcing city to city, trying to find new inventory to please people. On top of that, you got to keep (the clothes) clean, and you got to make sure everything is presentable – the presentation is everything.”
Snyder said that the most important quality a vendor can have is a good presentation. This element is key when deciding who will be able to join The Drunken Flea, Snyder said she wants like-minded vendors to join her vintage community.
She describes how her vision can’t be possible without the community surrounding her, and all the help she receives from workers to make the day run smoothly.
“(It’s about) the importance of community and the importance of acceptance and the importance of like actually caring about other people, even if you don’t know them,” Snyder said.
Synder said she remains passionate about the application process for The Drunken Flea’s vendors. She has created an application process that will showcase the best aspects of each vendor, as well as allowing up-and-coming businesses an opportunity to participate in their first pop-up event.
“I always want to allow new people to come and try it (having their booth at the market) out,” she said.
Snyder takes pride in the application process to join The Drunken Flea, as she has her set of unique standards for selecting vendors. She wants vendors who truly care about the craft, Snyder said that these things include presentation, credibility and effort.
“You should be able to tell someone why you’re selling this T-shirt for $150, like do your research, share it with people and that’s credibility,” Snyder said.
Snyder wants vendors who care about vintage, in the same way she does.
Snyder recounts how she learned to find vintage items due to her limited options while growing up. By only going to Goodwill, she knew how to scavenge through clothing and find things she truly loved.
“When I was in middle school … in the early 2000s, it wasn’t trendy to go to Goodwill,” Snyder said. “I mean you were poor; I would get made fun of if I told someone where I got something from … I have no other choice. I have to go to Goodwill, and I’m gonna try to just search for the good stuff.”
Snyder’s background on how she got into vintage brings not only compassion to mind, but empathy toward the art she has grown into and pursued.
“This has turned out to be so much more than I could have expected. And I don’t know if I can fully conceptualize that in my brain. I’m just, I’m appreciative of it,” Snyder said.
While she may be the owner, Snyder curates her own event on the main stage, spends hours meticulously choosing pieces from her shop, Wearhouse, to present at the pop-up.
The hustling environment was constant, as Snyder had to be in multiple places at once. Whether it’s on the walkie-talkie, talking to vendors or even running her own pop-up, Snyder has truly mastered what it is like being in two places at once.
She said there are often nights where she only gets five hours of sleep. Even with this, she is able to create an environment filled with music, laughter and community.
Snyder has been able to grow her business and allow it to prosper in order to create an experience filled with diversity and a sense of belonging in the vintage community.
This can be seen throughout the entire event, from the customers of all genders, sizes and ethnicities walking amongst the street of The Drunken Flea.
There are also a wide variety of items being sold, from vintage UK T-shirts to decades old fur coats.
“I wanted to start a really cool vintage pop-up market that wasn’t just all the same stuff,” Snyder said.
Although Snyder has loved what she has been doing with The Drunken Flea, mental health is something she acknowledges to be important throughout all of her work.
Snyder opens up about how she has battled poor mental health since middle school, and this project is no different.
In a way to improve her mental health, Snyder created The Drunken Flea. This gave her an outlet to a supportive community that could help her endlessly.
“I don’t know if I can fully conceptualize that in my brain, you know, because I’m appreciative of it, but I’m just like, I have imposter syndrome really badly,” Snyder said. “The core of why I began is because of my mental health and it came from necessity.”
Snyder emphasizes that The Drunken Flea is not only her baby, but also a way for her to have an identity in the world of vintage.
“I wanted to start something for myself where no one can fire me,” Snyder said.
Beginning The Drunken Flea, as well as her shop Wearhouse, was due to necessity, as Snyder had been previously fired from multiple jobs due to her poor mental health.
This event isn’t just work for her, it’s what keeps her moving forward, without this event Snyder doesn’t know who she would have become.
“I have so many things to be thankful for and this has been like, this is my creative outlet, this is my baby, it’s always the Wearhouse and The Drunken Flea, it’s always been this ball of my dreams,” Snyder said.
