The Big Top Flea Market in Tampa: An Economic Indicator?

The Big Top Flea Market in Tampa: An Economic Indicator? - We all know that the economy is in crisis. Even yacht-buyers are having trouble finding financing for the floating mansions after which they lust this Christmas. Yacht builders and vendors are having to beg their own banks to finance their customers' purchases, and having only spotty luck with that.

If the top of the economic food chain is having such problems, you may not be surprised to find more Mercedes and BMW and Lexus vehicles parked at the Big Top Flea Market. After all, the Big Top is not located in the dicey areas or Tampa or St. Petersburg, Florida, where other flea markets attract the local low-income clientele. No! The Big Top is between the prosperous suburban communities of Temple Terrace and New Tampa. The bus-riders can't get there, but the jalopy-driving contingent of the Great Unwashed find their way to the Big Top on the weekends to find bargains in a place where they won't get mugged lugging their purchases to their ancient pick-ups. The Big Top is really big - with building wings A through P fanning out in football-field length wheel-spokes from the central hub of food stands and bathrooms. With the addition of higher-end customers, I expected the Big Top business to be booming.

As it turned out ... not so much. Despite the heartening influx of luxury vehicles in the lot, half the vendor stalls in many of the buildings of the market were empty. More customers, particularly more affluent customers ... but vendors going out of business? The biggest live plants vendor - gone! The best furniture catalog direct-order merchant - their cupboard was bare!

Okay. This economy is hurting corporate employees and home-owners. They're losing their jobs and homes. They're cutting back into little apartments and starting their own businesses. So surely I would find these newly bare-bones pragmatists at the aisle-spanning, quadruple booth of the interior decorations vendor whose display of nicely framed paintings, prints and posters found a steady clientele among apartment-dwellers and business-owners. Not only were the clients not there, the booths were empty. At the double-booth end-cap of one building, a modest produce stand had replaced the tile and wood flooring vendor, driven out of business by the precipitous end of the housing market. No more do-it-yourselfers or cost-conscious contractors ... only folks in search of a decent tomato or pepper or banana at rock-bottom prices.

I had to wonder what all that meant, but I didn't wonder for long. More potential customers and more upscale cars in the lot, but less spending? Bad economic indicator!

Disconcerted, I gave up on my favorite window-shopping venues and trudged off in search of the few items I needed for myself. The hair and nails products discounter? Still in business. I bought my favorite salon-quality de-frizzer at 30% less than my salon charges and left, heartened by the thought even poor girls could still be pretty. But the biggest Avon shop ... closed! The smaller ones remaining didn't have my favorite bubble bath. (Fortunately, the CVS on the way home had a pretty good house-brand of similar aloe vera content.)

Which of the largest stalwarts of the market remained? The wretched food vendors in the center of the "big top" itself still filled the air with the stench of ancient grease. The "handyman's assorted tools" vendor was going great guns. The "cheap kitchen gadgets" double-wide, triple-long booth was doing a brisk business. The 10-booth-sized antiques and collectibles (and generic old junk) vendor's aisles were packed. I think people were hunting for items that reminded them of the security of Grandma's house in their youth. Or maybe they were just looking for the cheapest dinnerware they could find since being evicted from their house. The "brand name knockoff accessories" vendors were selling kinda-Coach, goofy-Gucci, and vaguely-Vuitton purses and wallets by the hand- or shoulder-full.

That was just the pre-Christmas scene at the Big Top Flea Market. The weekend after Christmas, there were even fewer fleas and fewer dogs to scratch them. Maybe everybody stayed home enjoying their presents. Maybe they were at WalMart or Macy's, trading the gifts they didn't want for items that they did, or using their gift cards. Maybe they were just all shopped out. But more of the shops were out, too. Empty booths behind chicken wire. Stocked booths empty of customers. It was a sad Saturday morning.

Maybe it's just that I was there too early in the day. Or too late in the season. Or too early in the economy's turn-around. Maybe there'll actually be a turn-around. Maybe the jobs-creation plan for the infrastructure-building and green industries will eventually trickle up so that the professional-level middle-class will regain its economic health ... not to mention its health insurance. We should, literally, live so long.