Article Reflection No. 76 (11/11/2023)

Article: “Surveying the Vintage Market at Texas’s Wildest Antique Fair”

Reflection:

In The New Yorker article “Surveying the Vintage Market at Texas’s Wildest Antique Fair”, journalist Rachel Monroe features an antique market in Round Top, Texas that attracts buyers with its vintage artifacts, expanding the region’s population from 87 to approximately 100,000 when the fair takes place in March and October. Reminiscent of a distant historical era, the antique items became a wide trend, with a designer and dealer likening it to the stock market. However, with an influx of shoppers—often consisting of people who can afford costly purchases totaling to thousands of dollars—the “hidden treasures” are increasingly difficult to find in the Round Top market. As Monroe details her observations about the fair, she ends the article on a curious note: describing the temptation to purchase a saddle from a 1920s Kansas dance hall, she uses the word “magic” —seemingly, a testimony to the vintage appeal.

Popular culture appears to continuously seek ways to appeal to more people and create more excitement around trends. As shown in this article, some individual(s) believe the Round Top antique market is deprived of its previously larger supply of “hidden treasures” because of the surging popularity of its products. In my human geography class, we are learning about different types of culture, and we learned that popular culture is characterized by changes in time as it is diffused so rapidly (e.g. viral trends). In contrast, folk (traditional) culture is characterized by changes in location—whether it is a place or region—and diffuses much more slowly than its popular counterpart. This concept reminds me of the deprivation of “hidden treasures” as the appeal of vintage items seems to be a trend that falls under popular culture. With the passage of time, how will the cultural landscape in Round Top change?