White and rainbow tents lined the main quad on Tuesday, May 21, featuring regular sellers from De Anza College’s monthly flea market. The scaled-down experience of the monthly Saturday market allows students to participate in a community they might miss on the weekends.
The Mini Flea Market is a quarterly event organized by the DASG Flea Market Liaisons. They are student senators elected specifically to work with the flea market.
This year’s liaisons were Jannah Sheriff and Ian Ang. Both were voted in last April and will retire from their positions at the end of the quarter.
Sellers included Stitch Lilly Design, who has been selling her collection of handmade bandanas, fanny packs and tote bags with the De Anza Flea Market since last year, and making them since 2018.
“It started with a $20 IKEA sewing machine,” she said. “I saw it and I thought, I could do that.”
The machine didn’t last long, she said, but it’s clearly proven its worth.
Gamers Heaven was another business present at the market. Founded by Dennis Yu, the anime gamers cafe provides a third space for those interested in everything from manga to tabletop games to the Tokyo shopping experience.
The table displayed multicolored sets of dice, enamel fan pins, card games and shoulder bags. While the physical cafe won’t exist until later this year, Yu’s business can be seen in its pop-up form at the De Anza Flea Market on Aug. 3.
In the Crochet Corner, Laura Ramirez has been selling with the De Anza Flea for six months. She says it’s one of her favorite markets because of the large number of families that attend, as children and parents are the main audiences for her knit animal plushies.
The Mini Flea Market happens once a quarter, but according to next year’s student senators, it may become a more regular event.
This was first expressed by Rami Abukhater, 17, a computer science major and a longtime fan of the flea. He said he finds a role model in current Flea Market Liaison Ian Ang and wants to continue his legacy.
Anish Shamarao, 19, economics major, was elected to be a liaison after working as a flea market intern this last year. He said he believes the flea market is a tool to promote small businesses and improve the community at De Anza.
“The goal is to get people together,” he said. With his upcoming term in the senate, Shamarao said he intends to streamline the flea’s website design and make it easier to navigate for those who are less tech-fluent. He also intends to work on vendor and shopper outreach to get feedback about the event and improve the social media presence for the market.
De Anza had its June flea market on Saturday, June 1. The next event will be just after Independence Day on Saturday, July 6.
