Video Credit: Brian Myers, Media Arts Center San Diego
By Brian Myers
It was an ordinary Sunday in Teralta Park for City Heights resident Francisco when he stumbled upon numerous signs proclaiming that what looked like a storage closet explosion in the park near Orange Avenue, was all free.
Really, really free, that is.
The event marked the the fourth straight year that volunteers hosted the temporary, informal and slightly chaotic Really Really Free Market in mid-city. Participants dropped off goods in the park for others to pick up and gathered new items for themselves.
With roots in anti-globalization protests of a decade ago, the Really Really Free Market idea survived and continues to be practiced internationally.
It’s based on the concept of the gift economy, where goods or services are provided with no expectation of profit or any kind of return.
“People don’t believe that things can really be free,” Rose McClain said.
McClain sometimes helps post the hand painted cardboard signs around the park that signifies the gathering has commenced.
“You don’t have to bring things to come,” she said. “Just come and gather things that you may be able to use.”
Although it wasn’t mandatory to bring items to share, people seemed happy for the opportunity to shrink their closets and bookshelves. The park was littered with cardigans and cookbooks for the taking. Leftovers were donated to a thrift shop.
It wasn’t all last year’s fashions, however. San Diego’s prolific environmental activist Rob Greenfield arrived with hot soup, bags of bagels and over two dozen cartons of eggs.
“Everything here is stuff I grabbed from grocery store dumpsters,” Greenfield said.
Spending time with Feeding America San Diego, he learned that one in four San Diego children are food insecure, meaning they don’t always know where their next meal will come from.
“Yet we throw away enough food to feed almost every single San Diegan,” he said.
It’s a casual protest highlighting the wasteful nature of consumerism and social inequality – or just a festive congregation of nice folks.
Whatever the motivation, Francisco left with a bag full of new clothes.
“I want to thank those out here that still care for people that don’t have enough sometimes,” he said.
At the end, volunteers cleaned up the park and donated the leftovers to the Animal Protection and Rescue League’s thrift store in Clairemont.
Organizers host the event every three months. The next Really Really Free Market is scheduled March 8 at Teralta Park.