It’s Present Season, Yo!

Over the weekend a yearly cool hipsterish Gloucester occurance took place: the season opening of Present.

If you get your news from dumpster graffiti or the back of a Keno card and haven’t heard, Present is a pop-up holiday season retail shop featuring a ton of local artists and great stuff to buy. It embodies the whole “shop local” movement but with the added bonus of buying handcrafted items from your friends and neighbors. Last year I pretty much gave everyone in my family stuff from Present. This year it’s at 269 Main, between Alexandra’s Bread and Leonardo’s.

This place has fish with tiny santa hats. WITH TINY SANTA HATS!

As a matter of fact, as far as friends and neighbors go, several of our own Clamtributors are involved with Present on a yearly basis. The hipster creative artist community and people who read and contribute to this blog had somewhat of an overlap, who knew? Both Staff Photographer Stevens Brosnihan and Poet Laureate Amanda Cook have stuff they’ve made here for sale. I’m sure someone in the comment section will accuse us of being shills or whatever, but bite my ass, this place rules.

Stevens Brosnihan’s RTFM patch. Jeez, google it, if you’re not a nerd.

Sunday was their opening reception, which Marty DelV took a time-lapse video of. You can watch me eat artichoke dip and rice krispie treats in time-lapse! If you’re into that kinda thing. It was an awesome time, and it was great to see the place packed like it was.

One of the most awesomely hipster things I found in there that I hope someone buys for me (not like this is a hint for my mom or anything) were these awesome fabric record-shaped placemats.

The handmade Christmas decorations kick ass. Want a tiny fox? Yeah you fucking do, because it’s cute as hell. You put that shit on your tree, and all the hipsters will come out of your bushes and be like “whoa, that’s twee.”

oh my god it’s so freakin’ adorable

Present is not only awesome because it contains many cool gifts, but also because it represents the Clam’s vision of what Gloucester is growing towards: a hip, artsy community of makers. We don’t need to import cheap plastic gifts – we can make our own right here in town from old sweaters and they are way more awesome! It’s ingenuity at its finest. And when we have homegrown stuff like Present and the Farmer’s Market and the other craft fairs that happen here, it grows our hipfrastructure, as well.

Heck, we’re so good at making stuff right here in town, maybe next year we can get locally 3D printed stuff at Present (Stevens I’m looking at you – make it happen).

Anyway, TLDR: Present is what makes Gloucester hip, and you can pick up locally-crafted stuff there for reasonable prices.

like a disco jellyfish.