Perhaps you’ve been to flea markets, art markets, or antiques markets, but what about an “oddities market?”
Market Street Market: A Curiosities Fair, billed as “a one-day marketplace of the macabre and the mystical,” will return to Northampton for its second year on Saturday, Oct. 3, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Market Street between Bridge Street and Graves Avenue. (The rain date will be Sunday, Oct. 4, during the same hours.)
The festival will have more than 40 vendors selling “oddities” like bone jewelry, tarot decks, occult books, taxidermy, and gothic art, among other things; live entertainment, including music, juggling, clowns, and drag; aura photographers; tintype photography; diviners; bowling; activities for kids; food; and more.
The fair first debuted last October, where it brought about 5,000 people, by the estimation of Dianne Germain, one of the co-owners of Splendor Solis Books. She, along with her husband Kevin Germain (the other co-owner of Splendor Solis) and Isaac Weiner and Danny McColgan, co-owners of Familiars Coffee & Tea, is one of the co-creators of Market Street Market.
The macabre, Kevin said, is about “embracing dreamtime and dreamland and fantasy and stories, and things that go bump in the night are exciting – it’s not always just scary. It’s a wonderful place to explore.”
The Germains, whose business sells books about topics like spirituality and the occult, had experience vending at other oddities fairs before Market Street Market, and they wanted to bring the experience to Northampton, especially to a street that’s not always included in walkable events spotlighting downtown Northampton businesses.
“The occult and the liminal space has sort of always been part and parcel to this area, in my opinion,” Kevin said.
For one thing, the town has a connection to witchcraft: in the 1600s, a woman named Mary Bliss Parsons, whose family owned land on what is now Market Street, was tried for witchcraft three times, decades before the Salem Witch Trials took place. Dianne also noted Northampton’s ties to musical counterculture through bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth.
The 2025 fair felt like Salem at Halloween. It was a hit for the vendors, some of whom told Kevin it was “busier than the Big E” and “the best event we did all year,” even after having vended at markets in Boston.
“It was a boon for the town, too, I think, because people were parking downtown and walking through, so all the businesses benefited. … Here at Splendor Solis and at Familiars, it was one of the best days we’ve ever had, business-wise,” Dianne said.
“There was one point Isaac and I were standing at the corner of Bridge and Market, and we’re just watching waves of people coming over. We’re like, ‘Where are they coming from?’” Kevin said with a laugh.
That fair was entirely self-funded. “We really bootstrapped the whole thing,” Weiner said.
This year, they were able to use their success to get funding from the city of Northampton for the fair, which helps make it possible to pay performers.
The organizers say the fair will be even bigger this year with more performers, thanks to the addition of a second stage, and more room for vendors because the fair will expand into a parking lot across the street from Splendor Solis. There also will be more wayfinding signage and more seating for people to rest or watch the performances.
Even though the fair has a spooky theme and is held in October, the organizers chose not to schedule it closer to Halloween, in part, because they didn’t want it to overlap with any preexisting events — plus, Dianne said, it serves as a nice way to kick off the Halloween season. It also helps that the weather then isn’t too cold and the sunset isn’t too early.
Still, as Weiner said, “Halloween is all month long in Massachusetts.”
Admission to Market Street Market is free. For more information, visit marketstmarketnoho.com.
