Holiday Backstage

This weekend, the neighborhood's annual holiday bazaar materialized briefly in the vast space once occupied by the Red Apple grocery. I was there in the early hours before the throngs showed up to shop for jams, candles, scarves, greeting cards, jewelry, and other mostly locally produced gifts. As always, I was more entranced by what lay behind the scenes, in the bowels of the old store: vacancies within the larger vacancy, relics of commerce.