Spokanites, some dressed in costumes and with their dogs, came out last Friday night for the final night market and street fair of the year, hosted by The Wavy Bunch.
Alena Horowitz is the founder of the market, which has been running for six years.
“Lots of people, lots of happy faces, lots of costumes. Vendors seem stoked. So I’m happy,” Horowitz said the night of the market.
The night market started in Coeur d’Alene but moved to Spokane three years ago, after the parking lot it was operating in got purchased.
But the story really starts 10 years ago. Horowitz started going to festivals, at venues like the Gorge Amphitheater in George, to sell her products under her business, The Wavy Bunch. That’s when she got inspired to start her own festival-like event — on a much smaller scale.
“Over 10 years, you learn a lot about all these different events and behind the scenes,” Horowitz said. “And as a vendor, I saw things that I would definitely change about a lot of the festivals and events.”
She said that in her experience, big festivals sometimes forget about the people selling.
“I wanted to have it be a lot more inclusive, in terms of like, the vendors are all a team,” Horowitz said. “So a lot of the big music festivals that we do, we’re just there. People don’t really know us or care about us kind of thing — or the people booking us, anyway.”
Now, she said she hopes to see the Spokane event scene grow, especially for local makers like herself.
“I feel like there’s a lot of room to expand in terms of events in Spokane,” she said. “Spokane is about the same size as Boise, Idaho, and Boise has a huge five-day music festival called TreeFort.”
At the night market, at the end of a line of vendors’ booths, was Brandon Douglass. He and his wife run Funk Industrial and sell their art. They’ve been vending at The Wavy Bunch’s night market since Horowitz started it.
“It’s my favorite [market] that I do,” Douglass said. “The vibe is great.”
Douglass also wants to see more events for vendors to sign up for locally, he said.
“There should always be more,” he said. “If there was enough for me to do two or three shows a week, I wouldn’t have to have a full-time job, right? So, there are a lot, but I don’t know that there’s a central place to find out where they all are. And a lot of them, like the bigger ones, you have to be signed up so far in advance that by the time you hear about them, it’s probably too late to get involved.”
The Wavy Bunch hosts six events every year, from May to October, each with a different theme. This is supposedly the last night market of the year for Horowitz, but that’s unconfirmed. She’s considering hosting a Christmas-themed one in the wintertime, she said.
