Nearly 200 artisans are setting up canopies and tables at NTC Park this weekend as the Jackalope Indie Artisan Fair makes its San Diego debut, bringing handmade goods, live music, and a dedicated youth vendor section to Liberty Station's Prebble Field. The two-day market runs Saturday and Sunday, August 29 and 30, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day, with free admission for the crowds expected to wander the historic waterfront grounds.
The fair began far from San Diego, in Pasadena, where Times of San Diego reports that Sara Diederich and Melissa Kohout launched Jackalope in April 2015 as a curated meeting point for community and artisans. Since then it has expanded to Burbank, Santa Barbara, Denver, and now San Diego, according to the same report. Kohout told the outlet that her own contribution is less about crafting and more about atmosphere: “her art is in organizing,” bringing artists together under one roof, per the article.
That curation is deliberate. Diederich said the fair presents a highly selective collection of work at every stop, and the co-founders have said they specifically want to avoid the kind of homogenized, artificial-intelligence-generated art that has crept into other art fairs, according to the Times of San Diego. Kohout has also urged shoppers to buy from artists they might otherwise never encounter, framing the fair as a discovery engine as much as a marketplace.
What's for Sale, From Sunglasses to Ceramics
Roughly 200 artisans across all trades will fill Prebble Field, per the report, including local eyewear designer Tom Kabbash. Kabbash launched Saunt Eyewear in 2021 after more than 30 years working as a product designer, telling the Times of San Diego he had been doing product design “forever” and was burned out before starting the brand. Saunt Eyewear makes sunglasses from castor bean oil using powder bed multi-jet fusion 3D printing and ultraviolet light technology, a domestic manufacturing approach that stands out in an industry where more than 95% of world eyewear production happens overseas in countries like China, Taiwan, Japan, and Italy, according to Saunt Eyewear.
Kabbash has built relationships with local San Diego partners and said being invited to the Jackalope market got his creative juices flowing, per the Times of San Diego's report. Another featured vendor, Briena Chavez of Dope Ass Ceramics, will bring a supermarket-themed booth featuring produce-shaped kitchenware and grocery baskets, with an experiential setup that requires extra space on the field. Chavez told the outlet that markets like Jackalope serve as a hub for connection, and that growing community interest in handmade items has helped her business grow.
A Family-Friendly Day With Hands-On Crafts
Beyond shopping, the fair is billed as family-friendly, with attendees encouraged to bring a picnic blanket, eat and drink, listen to live music, and try hands-on crafts like seashell decorating and indigo-dyeing. Kohout said the goal is for visitors to spend the whole day at the market rather than treat it as a quick stop. A standout feature of the San Diego debut is its Kids Market, a dedicated section where young entrepreneurs ages 5 to 17 sell their own handmade creations, according to DoSD.
The setting adds its own layer of history to the weekend. NTC Park occupies part of the former 550-acre Naval Training Center San Diego, which operated as a West Coast Navy boot camp from 1923 to 1997 and trained more than 2.75 million recruits before it was decommissioned under federal base closure actions, according to the Navy's Base Realignment and Closure program. The surrounding 100-acre ARTS DISTRICT Liberty Station has since been designated a California Cultural District by the California Arts Council and includes 52 Spanish Colonial Revival buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a distinction that the nonprofit NTC Foundation has helped steward since it was established in 2000 to renovate 26 historic naval structures on the site.
A Crowded Weekend for Handmade Goods
Jackalope's arrival lands amid an already packed local artisan calendar. Liberty Station is simultaneously hosting the San Diego Made Summer Market, a separate gathering of more than 120 vendors running August 30 and 31, as Hoodline previously reported. The overlap turns the historic campus into a major weekend destination for handmade goods, though it also raises the possibility of vendor overlap and a divided audience between the two markets.
Cultural tourism carries real economic weight for the region regardless of how the weekend's attendance splits. Non-local attendees at San Diego arts and culture events spend an average of $66.77 per person beyond admission costs, and more than a third travel specifically for the cultural event, according to the city's Americans for the Arts AEP6 study published in 2023. For a free market spread across two days at one of San Diego's most storied waterfront districts, that spending pattern suggests Jackalope's debut could ripple well beyond the artisans' folding tables.
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