Doc Project: Market World & Flea Market

One of the coolest parts of being a college athlete is the travel, and when you're a college athlete in the South, the travel is quite something. I've been so lucky to have gotten to go everywhere from Washington state to the very bottom of Florida, and a lot of places in between. Our most common state to compete in for my past three years at SCAD has been Florida.

While I don't love Florida (the heat and humidity makes running pretty miserable), it is an entertaining state. This past April, our outdoor track conference meet was in Lakeland, Florida. During our first morning there, a few of my teammates discovered a flea market a few minutes walk down the highway from our hotel. Naturally, we had to investigate. On a random Saturday morning in April, just a few hours after I ran a 10k on the track, my friend Max and I walked down a depressingly busy highway in the boiling heat and walked in the rusted fence into Market World. It was one of the strangest environments I've ever been in, and I'm still not sure if it's because it was a cornucopia of clothes, antiques, food and puppies for sale, or the fact that my legs were so sore I could barely walk. I bought one of the best smoothies I've ever had and a set of earrings that I wear nearly everyday. It was weird, pretty sketchy and super interesting.

As usual, I had my little point-and-shoot digital camera in hand and thoroughly enjoyed (respectfully) documenting everything that caught my eye. Max and I treated it a bit like a journalistic adventure by talking to as many vendors as we could and getting to know just how everyone ended up there, and how on earth they got the goods they were selling. Enjoy some of the details below and if you're in Lakeland and want to hold a live alligator, stop by Market World & Flea Market. But take sunscreen.