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HARLINGEN — The embroidery in the earrings with the fine detail of huts and flowers and butterflies show a meticulous patience and focus and dexterity.
Handmade jewelry from Guanajuato and Michelada Mix and designer purses and scented candles greet the exploring eye passing through the walkways running through the Harlingen Bazaar.
This new addition to the family of curiosity shops on Jackson Street offers still another fresh approach to the ancient craft of shopping and bargaining.
The dresses and the jackets and the shirts along the walkways of the Bazaar are unique from what Cris Elizondo can usually find anywhere else and that’s why she and her daughter Abigail come every Sunday.
“They are able to order things for you, unique gifts,” she says as 9-year-old Abigail moves quickly and joyously around Clever Daze Designs where Sarah Lynn sells her embroidery and shares moments of one on one time with the girl.
“I have always been a crafts person and I just started doing embroidery two years ago,” says Lynn, dressed in a playfully dark Halloween costume. She had been costuming with certain other parties and still wore her dark dress after returning to her store.
Mary Cano at Lupita’s Toys, Party and More shares the excitement of her place and the success of it.
“It’s going very well,” she says. “We try to have different items every weekend.”
She also has a salon in another part of the Bazaar where her son Damian Alexander, 10, first began to help out.
He soon became rather bored hanging around his mother’s salon and intrigued with the idea of having his own business. His mother explained the boys wants to go into business for himself one day, and this was a good way to start. He wanted to open a pizzeria but the family ultimately decided on an ice cream business.
His enterprise starting off is a freezer with all kinds of ice creams for every taste.
“We have Mexican ice cream, Mangonada with mango and chamoy, Bolis which are coconut and chamoy and Rompope,” she says.
Damian now opens the freezer to show Blue Bell Ice Cream and Bomb Pops and so many other delicacies.
“It’s fun,” he says. “I wanted to have a business because it makes money.”
This Bazaar has about 40 locations where local vendors are promoting their wares on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Marissa Martinez opened Harlingen Bazaar one year ago to “help small businesses and bring businesses to Harlingen.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s different from any other place on Jackson Street,” she says. “People come in with their whole family to an indoor location where they can find something for everyone.”
She gestures down the hallways where Nancy’s sells purses and candles and Angel’s Art Box where children sat at easels and painted pictures of Shrek and other drawings with acrylics and at Lupita’s Party Supplies with its counters and shelves of stuffed Yodas and Lego figures and transformers.
“Small businesses are struggling and we’re looking for the community to come out and support small businesses,” she says.
Antique shops and emporiums and boutiques line Jackson Street with their individual designs and approaches to the tradition of shopping. This is actually a contemporary rendition of an ancient practice that humans began many thousands of years ago.
Throughout the world archeologists find the remains of marketplaces where people bartered bread and spices and grains and jewels and clothing in ancient times. In contemporary times, a stroll through the famed bazaar in Istanbul and Izmir and many places throughout Turkey yields gold and lambskin jackets and carpets and meerschaum pipes and then sit at a table to play backgammon and drink hot Turkish chai.
In Nuevo Progreso, they are filled with woodcarvings, pottery, straw hats, candy, jars of honey, liquor, street tacos. Farther south, marketplaces can be found in the Mexican cities of Saltillo, Guanajuato, and Morelia. In that fine country markets can probably be found in every location.
In the Valley, Rancho Guadalupe de Campacuas on the Llano Grande Land Grant near Weslaco had a large market place where farms and ranchers would come to sell their products and enjoy camaraderie and even hold dances. Because, as many would agree, the market is as much a social place as it is a shopping place.
That’s another reason Cris Elizondo and her daughter Abigail come to the Harlingen Bazaar.
“I think we have formed friendships with the people who work here,” she says. “My daughter loves it.”
The following day on a Sunday afternoon Abigail sits with her friend Sarah Lynn at Clever Daze Design laugh in front of the tablets as they play “Animal Crossing.”
“I’m the blue froggy,” said Abigail.
“I’m the green one,” says Sarah Lynn. “We normally just play this all day on Sundays.”
“It’s really fun and we get to like go one each other’s islands,” she said with face glowing and eyes sparkling.
I’ve come to the Harlingen Bazaar to get a back and neck massage with some therapeutic elements at Stepping Stones and Letty the massage therapist uses her magic hands and well-practiced skills to relieve the frustrations and the stresses of life from my body.
I step out of her room and feel new again and with a much welcome revitalization of my energies and I immediately make new discoveries. The very next room announces Henna art, the next sells Tupperware, the next shop sells carrots and apples and onions and lemons, and the next sell fishing reels and camouflage jackets and rifle scopes.
And the next … and the next … and the next.
I realize now that every visit to this Bazaar yields new surprises and new experiences. No two visits are the same, and I’ve been to this place three times. This is a grand new venue for exploration and discovery and the creation of fresh memories.
I walk to the door to take my leave and a sign says, “Sorry, we’re closed.”
Hmmm. The outside world is closed? Such a sweet thought.
The rest of the world is now closed and only Harlingen Bazaar remains open and alive and inspiring, and it’s a fine place to be for a long long time.
