a let me tell you something i went to a flea market that was the total opposite last weekend it was so amazing there was indoor there was outdoor there were food trucks people selling all kinds of empanada as and sandwiches people walking around in costume people doing tattooing and music playing and indoors they were selling beautiful original artwork of incredible clothing that was hand painted it was so great so i'm going to take you and show you what i saw and then we're going to meet the guy who's responsible for creating whole event when i first got to the trenton punk rock flea market i was amazed by what i saw the food trucks the musicians and the cast i was feelin the bar so i wandered around asking artists about their art and i was encouraged to join in on the fun this excitement on the outside i can only imagine what was in store once i got inside the roebling building was filled with excitement and great energy there was something for everyone vinyl records jewelry and very interesting hairpieces even the creepy dolls were having a good time and who could resist sitting on this easter bunny's lap and now i want to introduce you to the creator of this event joe hey joe hi how are you a show glad to see you and i really appreciate you coming on i extremely busy it's been a busy time i think i know why i went to the trenton punk rock flea market i know it well and it was fantastic so a lot of what i want to talk to you about is that i know you do all kinds of events but t entire life for almost forty two years i live currently in hamilton right on the border of hamilton in trenton and you know i've been here since i was a kid it's always a place that's meant a great deal to me and i you know i always  remember growing up and you know wondering why there weren't more things creative things for people to do i always found that i was a creative individual and i think that kind of led me to later in life to be able to develop some interesting events to bring to the to into the events i know you just said you were sort of a creative guy did you have an interest i think the seventy's right that was punk know the bands that were coming in so were you were you a teen interested in punk back then you know when i went to my first punk show when i was twelve years old and it was the circle jerks in the weirdos i was nineteen eighty seven one thousand and eight i think it old i told my mother that i was sleeping in a friend's house with my mother didn't want me to go to what was considered one of the worst parts of trenton and his mom i friend's mom was ok with him going and so i lied to my mother to sleep with my friends out so that i could then go to successes of running other events like art all night which is the you know one of the biggest events here in trenton i thought that there was you know it through the success of that i realized that there were openings here that there were opportunities here for other interesting unique and creative events i didn't create the idea of a punk rock flea market there are there have been other ones that have existed throughout the years around the country i like to think that we took the idea and made it better you know we marketed very strongly i've got a background in marketing and graphic design so  static is very strong it's something that people seem to respond to when you say static just or visual a static you know the way that we you know that through the words that we used to promote ourselves through the graphics that we use the and that are designed to to do that you know we just people seem to connect with that and i thought that there was you know like i said i thought there were more opportunities here for creative things and large scale events and i spoke to a friend one night and said listen i think i would like to do a punk rock flea market here in trenton and i said i didn't think i didn't think that it would work i wasn't quite sure if it would work and she said you want to go what you want to go for it and give it a shot and the next day i designed the logo and the website and the facebook page and hit the ground running and then the first event i think was  about two months later i think you know we branded ourselves you know through strong visual logos and creating merchandise that goes along with the brand you know i think we established a quite a bit differently than other punk rock flea markets have done  and we've also done quite a bit a lot of punk rock flea markets deal and a lot of vinyl and vintage clothes and things like that and just stuff that people are trying to get rid of whereas ours focuses very heavily on creative individuals we welcome artists all different states but you know i mean you know we welcome a lot of creative types in a lot of artists and i think that's where we differ from a lot of other punk rock flea markets you know we welcome artists who are anyone who's you know that ethic and artists that are making things with their hands and just actual pieces of artwork right because i noticed a lot of things are home homey you know and that's one of the things that that's kind of one of the requirements that we have is that you either have to be an we don't welcome big box stores we don't welcome the vendors who are selling stove selling items in mass quantities things like that we think you have those those kind of things we do not allowed you know the jewelry that is there is generally made by hand the guy with the  beer and i'll pound out the caps for you make the samaritans estoril and that's and that's and that's part of one of that's you know that's part of the thing that i like about the event so much because we get to see the creativity behind you know the items that are being sold and not just the not just the tangible items and as you walked around as i walked around skipped around actually people in bonnie costumes and then you turn around there's somebody who looks terrified you know it lead guts coming out of their faces and then you know somebody else with th two isn't staff in the family you know walking past holding their kids hands i mean i was impressed with the artwork and i'm i guess when you said you ever created people from the west coast is there a kind of ove requirement is there a process that people go through to get into this flea market well the first things first it sells out very quickly it typically sells out in under five minutes yes really it's how did you get promoted we promoted through face book we have groups facebook groups that we used to gather all of ours and they're like five four three two it's you know we generally send an email or five you know within five minutes it generally goes pretty after the e mails gone out five minutes later you have every vendor's station show up just to correct how do you determine that somebody is somebody submit their work is that part of the process so we ask people to register when we open it up and then we go through and we from that list and we will because people have to submit their facebook pages their instagram handles their twitter handles their websites there at the stores so we will literally quite literally go through every vendor and check all of them and we will check all their social media channels to make sure that they are selling what they suggest that they're selling and then we you know we curate it backwards from there so if there are people you know there are people that get in pretty regularly that we don't feel as if should be selling with us there are other opportunities for you know bigger box stores or people that don't  you know people that don't fit our mold so we will happily let them know that you know they're not going to work with us and then we'll find another one another vendor from a waiting list that we set up after each event so when each event sells out we develop a waiting list and in that waiting list generally goes about four five hundred names deep for each event and then once we start rejecting vendors who we don't feel fit the mold of the trend punk rock flea market will go to that waiting list and start pulling from there you have it we have a boutique bus that comes yes  you and that was a vibe i mean i've been to a lot of an events planner i've done a lot of catering events i've done and i just felt this happy by the whole time and i felt it from the vendors there was no resentment like i'm not making any money here you know there was friendliness there was explanation of their products so how do you you do have a mission statement i mean how do you create that or is that she just talked about knowing you for a long time she talked about how you very respectful so is that something that you worked on or is it just sort of who you are or is it hard for you know i just think it's who i am i mean you know i like to treat people the way that i would like to be treated and you know ideally everybody would do that but i just know that that's the way that i prefer to live my life and you know you mentioned the vibe at the flea market which is really something that i find to be really really interesting because it does have this incredible buy of a really really positive vibe and you know one of the things that we always push and it's kind of an old like straight edge punk rock kind of kind of thing but we always push p m a which is positive mental attitude and you know it does it starts with me pushing it to my staff who all feel it and then in turn it gets relayed out to the vendors too and there was just this an incredible energy it's almost electric sometimes and i feel that there is just a tremendous amount of positive energy in our room when we do the event and that's one of the things that i love about of the most it's one of the reasons that i don't mind getting up at three o'clock in the morning  i think it starts with i think it starts with a team that puts it together and then that just kind of you know that those those kind of when you give out those kind of vibe i feel that stuff is you know it's energy people pick up on that sort of stuff and the crew that that we've been able to assemble over the past few years is really incredible they work together like a well oiled machine it's really just something to watch and you know quite frankly they all have this positive mental attitude they carry this through through you know throughout the event even when things go wrong you know people keep their heads up they stay positive and work together as a team and i think that teamwork goes a long way in kind of relaying that p m a that we like to promote throughout the event i interviewed a guy when i was there he looked like somebody had a kiss you know and he was just visiting you come from an hour away and he said the same thing just so you know it was not just people working right it was the people coming that it was such a positive event and they felt really happy and there was no nobody was hurting each other there was no negative talking there was it was just a generally amazingly friendly environment and you know and again we don't you know we've never had a problem with people not promoting that kind of vibe or that you know that that kind of feeling at the event but it's not that you know that someone who's not you know that we don't and we would not accept anyone who was ever selling any kind of racist kind of material or any kind of you know he did you know direct the hate directed at people with your lives not the kind of things that we would allow also and we make a very clear during the registration process and i think that kind of set the bit of a standard to so that people understand that we are only looking for p who are pushing positivity and people that are pushing you know positive creativity even more importantly you know punk rock and positive creativity you know when we when i was growing up in the eighty's i mean it was sort of  and all these kind of thoughts of you know blood and bones and guts and stuff and just sort of an irony that it was one of the it was just not that way and it was very positive you know i mean you know when most people think of punk they think of you know the streets they think of things that are gritty they  think of things that are edgy they think of things that aren't necessarily positive and that's quite an honestly never been my experience with punk rock as many as many bands or as people that might be negative there are twice as many people that are singing songs about positivity and  people that and you know it and i think it's kind of the same thing that happens here when bands are singing songs about positivity and keeping up that p m a that positive mental attitude that reflects to the crowd and they feel the same thing and i kind of feel that we kind of have that same kind of  on and dancing i mean well without it without the marching in the day well there was a guy at the flea market who was having his own personal party talks and he was on you and we and we love to see if he was on stage playing guitar by himself and he had me go i mean it was phenomenal it was so great so back to set up can you tell us a little bit about what actually how does that all work and besides getting together at three in the morning i mean how many days is it take what's involved in setting this thing up you know  event takes about three or four months to plan you know when we don't ever stop playing them we're doing five additions of the punk rock flea market this year two of which are in trenton and three of which will be will be out just outside of trend at another location that we just started working with and you know we never stop planning so as we're planning one we're already starting to plan the next so we've never really ends it's a constant cycle and then with the other events that that i do like all night that's coming up in june you know that that's a good  thing so as far as event planning and planning these large scale events doesn't ever end so i have a staff of about sixteen or seventeen people that have been with me for some people have just been with us for about a year my closest my closest supervisors and managers been with me since the very beginning and you know we've assembled a really amazing crew of like i said sixteen or seventeen people that just know what it is that they're supposed to do whether it be setting up tables or hanging banners or staging the bathrooms with toilet paper and paper towels and so  to just making sure that every aspect of the event gets set up you know well in advance and we generally for a saturday and sunday event we generally start setting up on thursday for that and then we break down more and we're completely cleared out by first thing monday morning tell me a little bit about some other events that you have that is that a bit about there was that you've done that you mention so i cut my teeth on our only trend which is now going into its eleventh year we just celebrated our tenth year last year was our biggest year yet where we welcomed over thirty thousand people in a twenty four hour period and it's actually a twenty four hour arts and entertainment event so it goes from three pm saturday on father's day weekend clear throughout the night until three pm sunday the following day and we w over sixty bands on three stages and that the biggest component of that is the community art aspect of it where we invite artists from all backgrounds and races and ages and cre to submit their work to be put on display for that twenty four hour period and last year we actually saw our biggest our biggest intake yet where we had over fifteen hundred pieces of artwork on display and the most interesting thing about that is that that's not that it's one one one piece per artist so that means there were over fifteen hundred artists that came from around the tri state area to submit their work and that was last year and every year it's gone up by three or four hundred pieces so warrant dissipating probably closer to two thousand pieces that we you know th then five this will be my six year running art almight as the event director and yes it's quite frankly you know that's kind of what you asked earlier if there was an inspiration for doing the flea market i think about you know thinking about it now i think arthel might probably serve is that inspiration for me personally only because i saw how powerful it is and how strong it is and how much it means to the community and that's always something that's that that's something that's deep inside of me that's something that i always strive for is to create a good strong community event and to drive people into trend to let them know that we're more than a negative headline that we've got creativity here we've got good strong people here and we've got people fighting hard to make a difference and show how much you are here because you pick and really know in my opinion we probably have one of the strongest art scenes in the state and you know i stand i'll stand by that every single day we have you know incredible artist here and arts groups here that are doing things i'm like i've seen you know and striving every single day to make trying to better place well are your plans for the future do you have any new ideas and that's new ideas nothing that i can share just yet but i'm always thinking of some new things you know i just might my main focus is to at least for now to perfect what it is that i'm doing you know we've  everything that i've done has grown very quickly and you know i rely heavily on my managers adrian and sara to you know keep every keep to keep the ship afloat and to make sure that we're doing everything the right way and now my main focus is on perfecting those events and then you know what that point will start focusing on something for the future you know we're starting to attract more people from the outside and people who are not only coming to invest financially but to invest emotionally and start working from here as artists and become involved here  as artists or as creative individuals or you know maybe they're volunteering they're not an artist there insuring for nonprofits like your art works so you know we've already seen a lot of that and ultimately what i would just like to see happen is for trenton to get back to you know find its former glory and i think that i think the structure of it is here i think you know from from the arts perspective i know that we you know we're strong as anybody and you know ultimately i would love to see people view trend in a different manner and understand that there are good strong positive things happening here and you can come here and you can be safe and you can enjoy yourself and then you know go home and then hopefully come back and invest more time into the checking out what's right now to offer with most of our events we give back to local nonprofits kitchen and then with every single event we always donate back to our friends and even autism services which is a great local group that works with you know folks with autism and we donate back to their adult education program and we generally donate a quite a bit of money back to them in that way that it will help for them to go back out and to do things in the community and to and to be involved and i would also imagine that there's a lot of vendors from trenton now we have a lot of interest in trying to absolutely we you know we try our best and they're selling things and making sure sure absolutely and the other thing we do as well as we welcome a lot of nonprofits to table with us as well the team which i mentioned before always has a table with us even autism services always has a table with us a lot of their participants are artists so we provide as well and you know showing people that there are you know there are nonprofits worthy of supporting as well joe is such a great activist in the community you're bringing back art you're making you know the new epicenter a come alive so i think that's an ordinary person doing extraordinary things thank you i appreciate that and you know also i have a lot of help along the way but i and i love that you're humble and appealing to other people's help so i really appreciate you taking