The Quality Flea Center and the Punk Rock Flea Market Seattle

The Punk Rock Flea Market Seattle is a non-profit organization created in 2006 that defines itself as the "Pacific Northwest's favorite underground shopping experience" in which from time to time "hundreds of vendors sell their unique goods in unexpected locations". Among those goods: arts, crafts, music, comic books, bike parts, painted rocks, graffiti supplies, jewelry, vintage clothing, stereo equipment, snake oil, droids, and untold riches of punk rock paraphernalia. Lots of cool stuff!

One of their locations is the Quality Flea Center, which is a very interesting place that I visited for the first time last weekend. As the name implies, this place used to be just one more bland location of the QFC chain of grocery stores, in this case situated right in the middle of Capitol Hill, in front of the famous Victrola coffeeshop. Some years ago this specific location closed, but recently it reopened as part of the Punk Rock Flea Market Seattle, and now from time to time it hosts a space for vendors to sell their unique punk stuff.

The organizers did a "remodel" of the building, to give it a punk aesthetic. As you can see in the pictures, there is a lot of graffiti plus some other curious decorations and it is very interesting how they reused the empty space of a former grocery store for their purposes: underneath all the new decoration, you can see the contours of the former store, as well as some remnants of when the grocery store was operating under COVID-19 circumstances (like the one way only stickers for the aisles). It makes for an ample and airy space, and it gives plenty of room for everybody to show their goods and there is still space left.

In addition to the vendors, on occasion there may be a live concert, plus other events. All in all, it's a very cool place to go: just check on the website to see when the Quality Flea Center is open.















Location: Seattle, WA, USA

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