The Trade, a new outdoor marketplace at the Barlow, starts this Sunday
The Trade will have more Sebastopol and Sonoma County vendors than the previous marketplace
This Sunday, March 17, will see the launch of the Barlow’s own outdoor vintage and maker marketplace, The Trade, which is replacing Head West this year. The event is being organized by Mercedes Hernandez, the Barlow’s new event coordinator and creator of the SoCo Market in Santa Rosa.
“The Trade is going to be happening the third Sunday of every month through November,” Hernandez said. “It will feature local vintage, antique, plant and maker vendors. There'll be over 50 vendors that the community is going to be able to shop from. We’ll have some exciting stuff!”
And the good news is almost all of the vendors will be local.
“So the great thing is I actually created the local outdoor community market called the SoCo Market here in Sonoma County. We host our events in downtown Santa Rosa,” Hernandez said. “I have a pretty big following and a huge connection with all the local small businesses here in our community. So with me introducing The Trade event with the Barlow, a lot of the same vendors were super interested in participating. My main focus was also to include more Sebastopol businesses. So I want to say probably like 95% of the vendors we have participating, they're all local here in Sonoma County. That's definitely a main focus of mine.”
The Trade is being careful not to include food vendors that compete with local Barlow food businesses, but they will have three fun new additions: a mini-pancake vendor, Boba Tea and a popular local agua fresca vendor called The Real Chamoy.
In the future they’ll have live music at every Trade event, but for the opening they’ll have a DJ spinning vinyl, “to create a cool fun vibe,” Hernandez said.
It’s completely free to attend, hang out and browse at The Trade.
The owner of Head West is not happy
Jimmy Brower, the founder of Head West, who tangled a few times with the Sebastopol City Council, is not happy that his fair is being replaced by the Barlow’s own in-house open marketplace—or how it’s being advertised. He sent an email to the Sebastopol Times announcing that he had sent a cease and desist order to the Barlow, demanding that they cease using images from past Head West events to advertise The Trade.
The photos and videos, which don’t show any trademarked Head West material, were taken by the Barlow’s own marketing people and covered by a photo release.
“While I have signed a media content release each year, my best hopes were that content would be used for promoting Head West-only, and not used in a misrepresentation of future events when/if Head West were to cease to exist at The Barlow,” Brower wrote.
More events to come
In addition to The Trade, Hernandez said the Barlow is planning on having more events in the future, including a Sip Soiree with over 30 different tasting experiences in April and a Seafood and Wine Festival in June. They’ll also be adding a marketplace feature to this summer’s Peacetown concert series.
The Trade premiers at the Barlow on Sunday, March 17, from 11 am to 4 pm.
Hopefully the city has finally figured out how to actually capture sales tax from vendors operating within the city limits. I hear they might be having budget issues.