Salem's Bizarre Bazaar

During the weekends in October, Salem's East India Mall is home to the Bizarre Bazaar. It's an open air cobblestone street open only to pedestrian traffic. There are several permanent shops that line the street but during the Bazaar, there's additional vendor stalls
 and tents setup along the walkway.

We started off the day at Brother's Deli in downtown Salem, a local favorite. As you can see, even the local businesses get into the swing of Halloween. It might be a law or something.

Also on the weekends, there are activities going on at Salem Common including pumpkin carving, kiddie rides and food stalls. This weekend, there happened to be Jedi training! He allowed any kid that wanted to to participate in a "duel" with him. There were lots of kids in Star Wars costumes which gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.



Here's one of the more interesting pumpkin carvings that was on display.



We made our way from the Common toward the Mall via Essex Street where there's some interesting shops. Crow Haven Corner is one of the more popular magic shops downtown and, despite its appearance, it's also one of the smaller stores. For those reasons, there's often a wait line to go inside in October.



Just a bit further down the street is the below store and one of the many haunted attractions located downtown. Although this part is an actual street, it's closed to vehicle traffic during the busy season.



Now we're getting into the Mall area proper and the vendors. There's a lot more than what I'm going to show but I thought these were the most interesting.
First is calaverasbykate.com.



She hand-makes sugar skulls in a variety of sizes.



In addition to the vendor tents, there's also a few caricature and makeup artists.



And you never know who might drop in when one of the local bands perform.



Here's a view looking down the pedestrian mall. This is a comfortable crowd, believe it or not! On Halloween night, you're pretty much packed shoulder to shoulder with people.



For some reason I didn't take photos of the Gravestone Girls tent. They take molds of gravestone images from around New England and then cast the image in plaster. With each piece, they also include notes on the grave the image was taken from and sometimes the meaning behind the image.

Image from Gravestonegirls.com

Last is my favorite vendor of the day: Swirly Designs.
They make some very cool Halloween decorations and ornaments.

We picked up one of the little vampire ornaments in the lower right.
His face is made from glow in the dark material!



All of their pieces have some great character to them, like this witch.

 

I also really like this caged raven. The little orange beads at the bottom of the bars are a cool little touch.

Here's an assortment of their other ornaments.

Hope you enjoyed your little virtual tour of Salem's Bizarre Bazaar!
There's a few more pics over on Flickr if you're so inclined.

Get more Halloween at Countdown to Halloween and Blog-O-Ween!