The 5th Street Vintage Market will soon kick off its second year of taking over the farmers market pavilion in Northport, Ala. Vendors will be selling items ranging from vintage clothing to vinyl records and antique housewares to homemade goods.
Lori Watts, owner of This Ol’ Thing Vintage, an estate sale service, for more than 20 years and co-founder of 5th Street Vintage Market, said she is excited to see the market grow and prosper.
“Business definitely continued to grow as the markets went on,” Watts said. “We were very surprised – well not surprised, but very happy. We’ve been planning it for so long, and we didn’t really have a venue until they built that pavilion last year. It was nice to see all our hard work come to fruition.”
Jamie Cicatiello, curator of the 5th Street Vintage Market and owner of Grace Aberdean Habitat Alchemy, said the vintage market has been a long time coming.
“Lori Watts and I have been talking about doing a vintage market for about three years,” Cicatiello said. “She’s been selling vintage forever, and every time we tried to get into a farmers market, we couldn’t because we weren’t selling fruits, vegetables or art. We kept saying, ‘Man, if we could only have a vintage market so vintage sellers could sell their vintage wears. That would be awesome.’ We were finally able to do it because the friends of historic Northport and the Tuscaloosa farmers market built the pavilion.”
The void that Cicatiello spoke about in Tuscaloosa has been filled with an overwhelming amount of vintage-wear vendors. The 5th Street Vintage Market started out with about 30 vendors, and by the end of the year there were 40. Now, at the beginning of its second year, the 5th Street Vintage Market has 50 vendors.
Sylvia Parker, also known as DJ Tom Kat Kitten, is a fellow curator and helps bring in similar music vendors like herself.
“A lot of the vendors are the people that the three of us have known,” Parker said. “I’m a DJ, and I also sell vinyl records, so I know people that sell vinyl records and have asked them to come. Right now the market is full, but we have a waiting list.”
Cicatiello and Watts said they now have securing vendors and making this market what it is down to a science.
“It probably takes about a week to alert all the vendors and another week to get the replies and map out where we want everyone to go,” Cicatiello said.
As an alternative to the usual baggy T-shirt and running shorts, there’s a wide selection of rare finds in the vintage clothes section of the 5th Street Vintage Market.
“A lot of times, there’s usually a great selection of vintage T-shirts,” Cicatiello said.
The 5th Street Vintage Market will begin Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will continue every first Sunday of the month through December. It is located at 4150 5th St., in Northport, Ala.
