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When Joseph Kuzemka held his first punk-rock flea market in Trenton in 2013, he booked 40 vendor tables and two food trucks, expecting at most 100 attendees. Over 3,000 people showed up.
This year, the weekend of April 12–13, the New Jersey Punk Rock Flea Market (formerly the Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market) will host upwards of 10,000 people per day, with 12 food trucks, at CURE Insurance Arena. Among the interesting offerings from the 500 vendors will be vintage clothing and toys, artwork, vinyl and cassettes, taxidermy, antiques, jewelry, curiosities, comics, and horror memorabilia. There will be cosplay contests, live piercings and tattooing, celebrity guests from the punk and hardcore world, and musical entertainment.
The market typically hosts events five times a year, sometimes in towns outside Trenton. It’s inspired dozens of similar punk rock markets in the United States and Canada.
To Kuzemka, it’s not surprising that the event caught fire here. There was always a strong punk and artistic culture in Trenton, he says, where he previously hosted a popular event called Art All Night. The flea market lets people buy “offbeat and different” art from the artists themselves, rather than secondhand sellers, he says.
The other reason? “A lot of New Jerseyans carry chips on their shoulders,” Kuzemka says. “That rebelliousness fits well in the rock and roll and punk rock lifestyle.”
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