Sugar Plum Bazaar

Aside from a small burst of claustrophobia on Level 3 (this house gets seriously crowded), I enjoyed myself while walking around the Sugar Plum Bazaar.
Vendors are hit and miss. Lots of jewelry, clothing, and sauces and spreads. Some way too expensive, others offering great deals. I was looking for more vintage decorating pieces which was not a popular showing the day I was there. There were maybe three booths that had vintage pieces. I did snag a few deals but all came from the same booth.
If you’re looking for jewelry or crafty clothing this is your spot. If you are looking for home decorating, not so much. You would have better luck strolling down Broadway.

Great selection of hand made crafts.
Terrible parking, super crowded.
Better if you can get dropped off, perhaps ride a bike?
The booths are very close together and set up in such away that you can get trapped in a booth and almost not be able to get out.
There are 3 floors of booths and they seems to get repeat vendors which can be good as well as bad. There are lots of baby type stuff, a fella that makes terrariums out of weird house hold objects, evoo gift sets (woot), the glass jewlery gal, the bird on a stick (meh), the go green booth that had all kinds of thing made out of old yoga mats and fire hoses — cool, and much much more.

I have to say that this market was one of my faves of the Holiday Season last year. I loved the variety and the location. What a gorgeous old home and filled with some of the most amazing gift items! I can’t wait for this years! I have so many people on my gift list this year and Sugar Plum will be the best place to find handmade, unique, creative items for my loved ones!
This market makes my least favorite holiday so fun and bearable!!!

I went in here with pretty high expectations. I was really hoping for a Horseshoe-​crafts style fair, with diverse and interesting goods, all laid out in an interesting organized space. What I got was 50 vendors, 45 of whom sold the same thing, in a labyrinthian old house (Parkside Mansion) with no parking, no plan, and no organization.
I know this is the first year of this festival, but come on. Parking was terrible; the Parkside Manion has extremely limited parking. They posted a sign advertising free parking at East High School. That’s great, except EHS is on a one-​way going the opposite direction, is over 3 blocks away, in a not-​great area in 32 degree weather. I circled the block until I found good parking. Once inside, it was a total madhouse. There was a box advertising suggested $ 5 donations for Ronald McDonald house. It’s nice that it was free, but it was not made clear if any of the proceeds went to them or if it was just the donations? I never saw a single person who seemed to be in charge of anything– just random vendors.
Parkside is an old 3 story mansion, and they crammed as many vendors in here as humanly possible. There were vendors, literally, in the bathrooms, in the entryways, just everywhere. They weren’t organized in any way: most vendors were baby goods, and in any given room/​floor/​broom closet, you’d find a clothing vendor, an upcycled vendor, a vintage vendor, a jewelry vendor, and 5 baby-​goods vendors. To be frank, I’d heard of very few of the vendors– none of my local favorites were there, and I was extremely disappointed with what I saw. I found one vendor whose jewelry interested me, and after I left the Bazaar, I stopped by Soul Haus, and they had all the goods of that vendor that I liked in stock. It took me about 20 minutes to park, and about 15 to navigate every nook and cranny, to decide what a waste of time it was. To make it worse, the people who were patrons here were some of the most unaware people I’d ever met– women all holding large sweaters up to themselves in a walkway the width of a magazine, completely unaware of their surroundings. That, along with the variable temperatures (stifling mixed with freezing outside air,) the strange mix of «food» (one coffee truck, a cupcake stand, and one tapenade salesman), the monotonous vendor selection, and the horrific lack of organization make me pretty apprehensive about every returning to these fairs. A shame.