Mod Shop brings together community for downtown Modesto

It’s about “connectedness,” a feeling of community, goodwill and the season of giving.

Sure, it’s about shopping, too, but the organizers of the Saturday, Nov. 26, annual post-Thanksgiving Mod Shop Handmade Market have a deeper goal beyond setting up vendors to peddle their wares.

“I just think that Ruhi and Tricia and I are about connectedness and that’s why we keep doing this,” Kate Trompetter said of herself and her Mod Shop co-organizers Ruhi Sheikh and Tricia Rosenow. “That’s the theme that comes up for us every year. We just want to feel great about where we live and we’re just glad to be a small part.”

This year’s fourth annual Mod Shop expands to about 90 vendors set up at various locations on J Street in downtown Modesto. It’s an evening cap to Small Business Saturday, when other purveyors also open their doors on a national day geared to encouraging people to shop at independent retailers.

Extending that movement, all the Mod Shop vendors hail from the greater Modesto region, Trompetter said.

The sprawling market, on J Street from 13th to 10th streets, sprouted from the now-defunct but similarly popular Hand Born Modern Craft Bazaar. Vendors will set up in several businesses, including Peer Recovery Art Project and its adjacent Mod Spot, Concetta, Mira’s Bridal, Deva Café, Mistlin Gallery, Preservation Coffee & Tea and – new this year – Ralston’s Goat and the community room inside Health Plan of San Joaquin.

The Mini Mod Shop returns, highlighting works by teenage artisans who will sell their items inside Mistlin Gallery.

Mike Shelton, general manager of Ralston’s Goat, said his restaurant opened Dec. 2, just missing the event last year, so he’s happy to be able to participate this year. Vendors will be set up in the larger dining room at 10th and J streets and the restaurant also will be open with full menu and bar.

“It sounds like a wonderful thing for people to get out there and show their talents and sell their wares,” said Shelton. “I’m all for bringing people to downtown and letting them know there’s life down here again.”

Other downtown restaurants also will be open and there will be a live outdoor music stage, buskers performing throughout and an artist creating chalk art on sidewalks, Trompetter said. Adding to the draw, the Modesto on Ice rink will be up and running.

And a special outside duo art installation will be offered by Downtown Tinkertank, which should add a particularly unique attraction.

Under the large overhang at J Street makerspace, an immersive installation will be set up that “you can think of loosely as trees,” Tinkertank owner Brie Parmer said. “They’ll be inflatable with LED lights, changing colors. ... You can walk through it and touch the trees.”

As a companion – and weather permitting – they also will project the installation on the outside of the Union Bank building across from Tinkertank, a live cast of the inflatable forest as people walk through. If the weather does not cooperate, a winter snow fall will be projected instead, Parmer said.

“Kate (Trompetter) had asked us if we could do some sort of interactive art installation,” Parmer said. “Being the hilariously absurd people we are, we said ‘that sounds fun, let’s make it as crazy as possible.’ ”

That sense of cooperation among businesses is part of what helps feed the Mod Shop spirit. “Every year we get clearer about our mission really being about bringing people out to downtown Modesto and supporting local businesses,” Trompetter said.

All the wares sold during the fest are handmade and run the craft fair gamut – paintings, jewelry, home decor, bath and body, ceramics, foods, leather goods, knit and crochet items, children’s items and more.

Each year Mod Shop also highlights and supports a local nonprofit and Interfaith Ministries’ Mobile Farmers Market will receive all proceeds raised by a raffle Saturday night at the Modesto Chamber of Commerce.

The event has grown since its 2013 inception, both in vendors participating and people showing up to buy, wander and enjoy, Trompetter said, adding that she and the other organizers have been overwhelmed by the support.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled. Some of these places, when I think about it, wouldn’t normally be open (on a Saturday night), but they open their doors, provide staff, electricity, just so we can have people come in,” she said. “That’s community.”

And it returns to that theme of connectedness. “You just want to be seen down there because you’re going to feel good,” Trompetter said.

“I think part of it is seasonal, it’s a thankful time and when I’m in a space that I love, surrounded by people who are happy it becomes contagious,” she said. “Art does that to people, music does that to people, community does that to people. You just want to smile.”

This story was originally published November 18, 2016 at 11:36 AM with the headline "Mod Shop brings together community for downtown Modesto."