Artist Spotlight

In this month’s artist spotlight we bring to you Florida's very own Goblin Market...

Sherry Zastrow: Tell me who you are and what you do!

Court: Hi my name is Court and I'm the executive director of Goblin Market.

SZ: What was the inspiration behind the Goblin Market?

Court: I really wanted something that leaned into trinket culture. It's part of what inspired the name to begin with. Being a little goblin guy with your trinkets and bobbles. We also wanted a space where artists could bring some of their stuff to trade with other artists and patrons. Perhaps you have a really unique bottle-cap or keychain with a story you want to trade for a poster on our swap table. Not everything here's about the dollar. We wanted to provide a space for those who want to barter to be able to do so that people can come no matter their situation.

SZ: I LOVE the barter system y’all have. It's truly unlike any other market I've seen. Very punk of y’all to lean away from the dollar and consumerism. Speaking of, what got you into all this?

Court: I got into this because I started on the other side of things. I was a vendor and would research various markets and notice things here and there that I would do different. Eventually I realized I could just DO it. I went full in for two years and those first years were nerve racking. Always worrying about making things better and could I do something different and be more accommodating. The few times we've got it wrong, luckily our vendors and community have been endlessly patient and understand we're here for them.

SZ: I mean, you're a growing market, it's not like y'all, are a market that's been around 10+ years.

Court: Yeah, I think that was part of my thing. You were asking about my inspiration and deciding I was even ready to do this. It did include being all of the people- I would attend things like conventions and markets of different types inside and outside different times a day, different places, different venues. Then volunteering at them and also vending. That was probably 2 years of my life working part-time somewhere else and doing research, and then I was like, okay, it's time.

SZ: I've been patronizing y’all for a few years now and have never heard anyone have a bad time. I've actually been on the other end of y'alls accommodations. I have POTS and my mom has diabetes. She had a sugar dip and sat down rather quickly and your people IMMEDIATELY swarmed and asked if we were okay, if anyone needed water or snacks.

Court: Laughing Yeah, we really do try to be as accommodating as possible. Though we do encourage people to think about what time you're coming too. If you tend to get overwhelmed, our last hour might be best for you. If the heats a problem, definitely join us earlier. We will help as much as we can, but we also don't want people to feel like they have to stay if their health takes a dip. On the vendor side we have them fill out an allergen sheet and try to be sure, you know, we put people with chronic headaches away from the candle makers. We have spaces like the sensory space where we're trying to help people who accidentally get overwhelmed or are looking for a reprieve. Things like that.

SZ: Speaking of vendors, I really appreciate that I never see AI slop here.

Court: Yeah, since the beginning we’ve said no to AI slop ANYWHERE. We've had a couple instances where something snuck in or a logo was AI. Our community was awesome at letting us know if we don't catch it. We're even careful about 3D prints and trying to not have too much of any one type of product.

SZ: Your events have only been growing as of late. I believe the last event I attended was at the Central Florida Fairgrounds. That was your BIGGEST venue yet and even then I remember it being nearly shoulder to shoulder and a line wrapped out the building. That must've been an incredible feeling.

Court: That was part of the thing scaring me, like the line was so incredibly long and I was going through a loss at the time. While it would've been nice to have another week, you can't just cancel these things because of a hard life event. So you just grab a friend whose a vendor, go have a cry sesh and quickly get back to it. I think we did pretty good for where I was at.

SZ: I get that. I've had events I've had to cover and you just have to duck into the bathroom and cry, then get your game face back on and go back out there. A self contained cry sesh. laughs

Court: Right let me take a break then continue... laughs

SZ: I had no clue you were going through anything honestly. You couldn’t tell. You had volunteers running the line, encouraging people to get some shade and passing out ice and water. It was incredibly smooth.

Court: We quickly learned, which was nice, but even then it was like the facilities weren't up to par for the number of attendees. There was NO precedent for how huge that event was. There's ticketed events, you know the capacity of those. Free markets you kinda know the capacity of those, but for Goblin Market, since it's so new and changing, my question was always "Is anyone gonna turn out??" I don't have that question anymore. For the first few years though, I'd silently wonder "what if no one turns out, what if no one turns out? What if this just sucks?!" But not even a half hour before the event began I'd start to see people wander around and relax. Honestly at this point it's finding enough volunteers to keep up with demand.

SZ: I mean if y’all are failing, you're failing upwards because the market just gets bigger and bigger every time I see y’all.

Court: Oh my god, yeah, which I think that's the other thing about moving inside is we do have the audience, but it's hard to find space for that audience and also that audience would- if you've heard the quote "don't raise the price of the hot
dog or I will fucking kill you?" Yes, like we feel as though we cannot ticket Goblin Market right? Like that is one of our guarantees. We could start another event, right? We could do something else, but Goblin Market with the trading, that has been part of it as like a free community thing, that we can't pay wall it.

SZ: Well, that's why y’all have things like the maid cafe. Isn't that ticketed?

Court: Yes, so it's the same thing as like flash tattoos like it's a flash day. They are cheaper, but they're still charging regular tattoo prices, right? Like some things are just worth the money. But even then, like our maid, cafes $20, and it's all inclusive. Most maid cafes are 15 to 20 dollars. And that's just to sit. Then you have to pay whatever it is for the food. You know, so it very quickly increases. All of our people are working so hard to make it like way more unique and presentable and obviously queer in all kinds of ways. Yeah, so, yeah, I think $20 is fair. That doesn't mean everybody does, but sure it's also a smaller capacity so that works out for us. But with Goblin Market, like it both needs to be free and accessible and high capacity right? Which is very hard.

SZ: That sounds like a wonderful, but also, as you were saying, horrifying place to be.

Court: Yeah, that was definitely June. It is like, okay, cool, like this is my life now. And also, what the fuck do I do? I have to make a decision right now? Are we cutting capacity? What am I going to tell these people? What do we do, like keeping a line out of the road? Like, where am I going with this? Just keeping up with all the needs of the attendees for every 100 attendees, you need a volunteer, and we're at a fifth capacity. So like I said, I think a lot of people don't realize and are in that learning curve when I say we need mutual aid, I mean it. You're either paying us on Patreon, you're paying with your ticket or you're showing up, you know, it doesn't have to be money based, but we need something.

SZ: I think it's important to note y’all are a small team and not some huge company.

Court: I'm just a guy.

SZ: You're just a guy, trying to trying to do a market that is as accessible and you know, open to as many diversities as possible.

Court: Yeah, no, definitely. I think that is another thing. Just the marketing of it, I didn't necessarily go out of my way to invite these communities here, just because the way we presented they showed up which is awesome, and I think the curation definitely has something to do with that too. I think Goblin Market just knows our audience. Also I thankfully have a team now, which is awesome because we decided to be a nonprofit which isn't easy in any degree. I do have an awesome board and accommodations team now. That took a while to get together. And a team of volunteers and staff. It's full-time for a lot of people. It's part-time or gig work for others. And all of those people on the team are great but it's just never enough when it comes to the day of right? You can have someone in charge of editing a videos and you can have someone in charge of posting them, but day of you cannot only have two people in charge of capturing content of the entire event of floating in 250 vendors. In 3 hours, right? You just need what we call them, captains and grunts.

SZ: Tell me more about that...

Court: Those are our goblins, representing the volunteers. Oh, I love them and we need a lot more grunts and a lot more captains.

SZ: Well you almost have to over plan for these sort of events too...

Court: Yes, almost certainly. Which is the nice thing of having people - when you have enough volunteers to tell them to go wander around, that's the best spot to be in. I think some people just don't understand that, like if you don't volunteer, it doesn't happen. And that's an ultimatum that is very difficult to make, and I don't want to make to people, but like that's the next issue of...you don't understand there's not even a place I can go to to hire enough loading people, even if we did have the money to do it. You either volunteer and you kind of learn a little lesson and then you get to explore the market for the rest of the morning, or we'd cancel it like genuinely. We're not going to put on something that's unsafe, right. But I just worry that the community doesn't know that. And so I don't want them to feel blindsided when/if it ever happens, so I'm trying to make it explicit now that the more people who volunteer, the easier it is for everyone, and that it can be fun and enjoyable, like genuinely, we have a discord server everyone hangs out.

SZ: Well, that's actually a great point to bring up. Here is the bonuses of volunteering for this crew for yall...

Court: Yeah, I mean personally, I'm someone who did go kind of through the layers of hell in my early years of working. And so, even though I would not give that to anybody else or do it again, it did equip me to do fucking anything. Like the last minute stuff, super intense stuff, in person stuff, online stuff. I felt very ready, but I feel like Goblin Market is one of those where I never want to burn anyone out or burden them too much. I think if you're someone who is looking to improve your resume, learn a new skill, build a network of people, even just basic socializing, there are a lot of different opportunities to become a member of a community- which doesn't just mean, oh, I'm gay, I'm in the queer community. No, that means you're gay being active, helping other people working in a mutual aid, like this, that's actually being part of the community that's being active as a member.

SZ: It doesn't matter how big or small your market is or your event is if you don't have volunteers, it can't happen. Spooky Empire is one of the bigger ones in our area and without the volunteers, I don't think it'd happen.

Court: Even though conventions do bring in money, they still work with a lot of volunteer labor and part of it is the difficulty of it being gig work. You're not someone whose going to be like a vendor load in is my job title. You don't major for this in college. So I think it's like a multi-use skill. This is a great space to get those skills and network, which I think people struggle with. I'm not saying the job market's good, but I'm saying this is how you do it. It's never been what you know, it's always been who you know. I'm sorry, your dad is right.

SZ: Well my dad is one of those you just go in and you hand your resume. So my dad was wrong.

Court: Laughing Yeah I think Goblin Market is a good place to actually learn to network. Gig work is a lot of just "oh I'm going to go here and prove myself as a good photographer (for example). And then the maids that I'm taking photos of happen to be idols, and they're going to refer me to a convention that's hosting an idol fest. And now I have another paying gig, that's how it works. Showing up, learning the skill, doing your job. Well, that makes me more likely to refer you to conventions too. Conventions have asked us for recommendations before on hiring. You know, like we hire ourselves, we promote volunteers to captain's. Captains are paid roles, right? So there is opportunity to move within Goblin Market and also within connected parts of our network, but it's never going to happen if you don't volunteer. Everything here is a transferrable skill though.


SZ: Basically this is the stepping stone of getting into gig and entertainment areas, so you mentioned this is a non-profit. What is the idea behind the nonprofit?

Court: The whole point is we want to make a lot of accessible things- both in terms of physically accessible and financially accessible for a bunch of different people. So whether that's low cost to attendees or vendors, whether that's completely free or has trading aspects and discount. You know, stuff like the swap is completely free. It's really cheap for our vendors, and you're trading, so you're not even necessarily purchasing anything, right? Even something like the maid cafe comparably is very cheap. Even if it is a $20 ticket, which might be expensive to some people, you know, when we did something like Kaidu Mart at the Zimerian Meatery, we went and inspected the space. Is this physically accessible? Do we have a capacity to ensure it is physically accessible?

SZ: Basically creating third spaces for the queer, disabled, and alternative community.

Court: Passively, that's what's happening. But like I said, we're not looking to put too fine of a point on it. Because it's you know, random person B wants to happen in, we're not going to turn them away. they don't have to fit into any category in order for B to be welcomed.

SZ: Want to shout out or any like any people within your organization that you're especially proud of anything?

Court: In general, like as much as I'd say that, you know, I'm just a little guy, and like it was my idea genuinely wouldn't happen without every single person along the way from the one person who does 1 shift 1 day out of the year, to our board president Sarah, who runs their own nonprofit as well. They work their ass off on the spreadsheets and the taxes and all the things I'm not equipped for, every single person from attendee to vendor to volunteer to staffer like genuinely, I would not be able to handle all of this and that's why we're looking for volunteers. As we expand we need more people to help handle it. But I am grateful that we are where we are. It was seemingly like lightning in a bottle, which I'm so lucky to be someone to be able to capture. But the goal is to keep doing it so that other people can experience that as well, you know?

SZ: Absolutely it was perfect timing, right? Space right time, right person.

Court: Yeah, thank God.

SZ: It sounded very nerve-wracking that first year of shows?

Court: Two years, oh yeah. It's like, oh God, I'm putting all my time and all my energy and all my effort and all my money wrapped up into this, is it gonna work? Yeah. Seeing the empty space and being like, are people going to start filing it? It looks really empty in here, and then even worse in June it was the opposite. There's so many fuckin people, so we need help. It was like the suffering from success of it's going really well, which is awesome and then me just trying to get friends involved and now get strangers involved who are becoming friends.

SZ: Trying not to sound like "My lobster's buttery and my steak's too juicy."

Court: Yeah! And it's genuinely a struggle which is crazy. That's the embarrassing part. How do we recruit good people to do good work? How do we put them in the right places? How do we get the stuff done? But at least right now, we're keeping up, so that's good.

SZ: I am very glad you're here, I talk to a lot of attendees and vendors doing this- everybody's super happy here. You have the support and confidence of all the people who work at it.

Court: Which is the other very lucky thing, I think people don't think we're blundering which is good and whatever we do blunder, everyone is so forgiving because they're like, I know they're gonna fix this, you know.

SZ: I think that perhaps you put a bit more pressure on yourself than the community does. But that is the sign of a good event runner is that they are harder on themselves than the community could ever be.

Court: Yeah, always pushing for more and to do it better and cleaner and more organized and whatever. Like yeah, at the end of the day, it will be done. People will come, they will enjoy it, which is good. That is the main goal.


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