sbalkin's blog
Maxwell Street Maybe Has Already Moved to 41st and Ashland
For Immediate Release: March 23, 2009
Maxwell Street Maybe Has Already Moved to 41st and Ashland
By Steve Balkin, Roosevelt University at Chicago,
Email: sbalkin@roosevelt.edu
Webpage: http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/Balkin/maxwell.htm
Like a frog slowly dying in gradually hotter water, the New Maxwell Street Market has been killed off by City Hall and Aldermanic indifference, ineptness, and ignorance. But before being boiled, multitudes of vendors have voted with their feet to go elsewhere, mainly to the Swap O Rama Flea Market on 41st and Ashland, where fees are lower and management is more skilled.
Empty vendor spaces abound on Des Plaines Street on Sunday, the new site of the New Maxwell Street Market. And the Blues musicians have disappeared too. The explanation is basic textbook economics, higher fees, stifling regulators, and mismanagement. The Mayor’s Office of Special Events now runs the Market with Jam Productions as their highly paid co-conspirators. Neither of them know how to run a grassroots community public market and, it seems, neither of them want to learn.
BBC Series on outdoor markets around the world on the web
March 2, 2009
BBC News has great series from differen types of outdoor style
marketplaces around the world. This is being broadcast in
segments on its BBC World News on TV and is available to see
on the Internet at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7907335.stm
The series is titled: “Fruits of Crisis” and also “Global Markets Feel the Downturn.”
Several of the markets report business is booming. Vendors comment
that customers are going back to the basics.
Video reports come from Beijing, Dubai, Lagos, London Mumbai, Buenos
Aires, Johannesburg; and audio-only reports are from a Moscow flea
market, Cairo camel market, Australian cattle market, and Addis Ababa grain market.
-- Steve Balkin, Roosevelt University, sbalkin-AT-roosevelt.edu
