Another weekend, another Halloween… but I’m getting ahead of my blogging. Last weekend saw the last SoWa open market of 2009. SoWa is a silly term for the south end of Boston’s South End.
It was a lovely sunny October day, we bumped into some friends, we bought some art… The print of dinos reading is by Eric Sturtevant: our home life sometimes resembles the picture.
The two smaller prints are by Chen Reichart, whose blog and Etsy store are called botodesigns. The autumnal print seems to illustrate that we should become a two-Android family soon. Chen and her partner were kind enough to compliment me on the tshirt I was wearing, and to ask where I got it (Threadless, Star Men in Moon’s Milk).
Indeed, the SoWa market is like Threadless, Etsy, and similar web sites come to life, in ways that demonstrate advantages of real life over the web. The market has a good selection of tshirts, crafts, etc. It also has an antique market next door, in a rather wonderful old trolley barn.
The market also provides the chance to meet the artists: that’s face-to-face, the ultimate social medium. On Sunday it had sunshine, halloween candy and other seasonal flavorings. Now, time to post this, and get ready for halloween itself.
SoWa is not “a silly term for the South End of Boston’s South End.” SoWa is a carefully planned and well executed marketing campaign by GTI Properties [which owns most of the buildings along Harrison Ave. where the Open Market takes place] which has been instrumental in the revival of that area. SoWa stands for South [So] of Washington [Wa] St. and is now recognized by the City of Boston as comprising an important sub-district in that part of the city. So while you make think it’s just ‘silly’, a great deal of work has gone into branding that neighborhood, including hundreds of hours by volunteer members of the community to promote the neighborhood and make it a safe and fun place to live.
Marc,
Thank you for taking the time to read the post and leave a comment. I stand rebuked.
Um, it’s silly to many of us who live in the South End. Most people I know hate the term and refuse to use it, some going so far to poke fun at those who do. It reeks of unimaginative pseudo-creatives trying to make the sound New York-y. Not exactly original and this isn’t New York. It’s a really really stupid sounding, not to mention, the area really isn’t even south of Washington St, more east of it.
Great meeting you at the market! Thanks for the Botodesigns shout out! I found your post today through the SOWA twitter page http://twitter.com/sowaopenmarket.
Hope to see you at future markets in Boston 🙂
p.s. thanks for the shirt link too!