Syracuse community shares ethics, safe space at Queer All Year Market
The Queer All Year Market focused on accessibility and inclusivity, organizer Nicole Kerekes said. Vendors didn’t sell clothes at the event because Kerekes felt she couldn’t ensure that clothing items would be inclusive of everyone attending. Parisa Nosrati | Contributing Writer
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Artistic booths circled the community room at Salt City Market, with enthusiastic consumers and sellers coming together to shop local, accessible goods. Each booth had its own aesthetic, creating a wide variety of handmade products, like pottery and ornaments, for customers to explore.
“The queer community is a place that everyone’s accepted and welcomed, and that’s how it feels in this room,” attendee Charlie Nudelman said.
The Queer All Year Market took place this Saturday. Local vendors sold items like handmade accessories, fragrances and artwork. Nicole Kerekes organized the event, sponsored by her business, Front Porch Collective.
Front Porch Collective provides grief support services to adults experiencing any type of loss. She said her goal was for those who attended to find a community of people similar to them, creating a safe space for all consumers and sellers. Kerekes said she often works with queer clients due to the prevalence of grief in the community.
“I hope that the folks that come… realize that there is a huge community of makers and businesses in Syracuse and in central New York that share the same ethics with them,” Kerekes said.
Kerekes said the difference between this event and others she’s put on in the past is that she felt more passionate about this one. She said the event was an extension of Front Porch Collective’s mission to help clients find purpose after grieving death and non-death-related loss in their lives.
Kerekes said her main goal is supporting the queer community, not just as a queer person who has her own business, but also as someone who came out as an adult.
Many vendors and attendees said Kerekes fulfilled this goal and the sense of community they felt was refreshing to them. Gabi Coll, a vendor selling affordable books, said that events like these have helped her find a close connection with others.
“It really has made us feel like there’s groups of people that we can relate to and that we can share things with and that we can highlight and it feels like our space,” Coll said.
Coll said this community is the most important thing to come out of this event. The interactions are more important than the purchases, she said.
Vendors and attendees said the sense of community at the market was refreshing. Building community is a main goal of the Queer All Year Market. Parisa Nosrati | Contributing Writer
Nykole Nevol, founder of Willow & Wool Crochet Co., said it’s crucial to have queer markets all year, not just during Pride Month. Nevol sold crochet products at the event.
“The LGBTQ community does not change once the end of June happens, so I think having more queer spaces throughout the year is so important, and I think we’re slowly building more of those spaces, especially here,” Nevol said.
Sarah Seib, founder of From Smoke Fragrance Co., a local candle and perfume vendor, said spaces like these are important for queer people who aren’t always comfortable being themselves.
“It seems that there is a lot of acceptance, thankfully, in this area, but there is always a shadow of doubt in a lot of situations where you may not want to really show that part of yourself and be as authentic as you could potentially be in a space like this,” Seib said.
Seib isn’t the only person who has struggled with authenticity. Author of “Poems of a Queer Neurodivergent Loser with Codependency Issues,” Crow Lundervold said they can also feel alone as a queer person.
Lundervold compared this event to one they’ve sold their book at before, and said their work was much more successful at this event than the last one because this event was for queer and neurodivergent people.
Kerekes said it was important to her that this market would be accessible to everybody, so she took extra precautions to foster a safe environment for all who attended
She met with CNY Better Breathing Bloc to make sure there was clean air at the event, and discussed accommodations like walkways and door openers with people in the disabled community.
Kerekes made sure no one was selling clothing, because it would interfere with her goal of inclusivity for all bodies. She said it would be too difficult to review every seller’s inventory to make sure there were no inaccessible elements like non-inclusive sizing.
The accessible and inclusive focus of the event paid off, Lundervold said.
“Going to events like these make me feel like I belong,” Lundervold said. “And I feel like people, additionally, can relate to my words because they had experiences similar to my own.”
