July 2026
For this first blog post on the new website, I thought I’d share how the Kansas City Really Really Free Market was created. I tell the story often to new guests. You might have heard it before if you’ve met me at an event. It goes, “I saw a really really free market in Winona, Minnesota. When I looked online, I saw that many cities had them but Kansas City didn’t. So, I decided to start a really really free market for Kansas City.” While nothing in that version is untrue, it is streamlined and simplified for repeated telling. Here is the whole story as best as I can remember.
During the summer of 2009 before my freshman year of college, I was spending a weekend in southeast Minnesota with my girlfriend at the time Becky Montgomery. In a cafe in Winona, I saw a flyer for the local really really free market. Now here is the first detail I usually skip over, I never visited that market. I was only in the area for one weekend and not the weekend of the event. The flyer was compelling enough and the idea stuck in my mind. Here’s the other detail I usually skip over, that idea would take years to develop.
In the winter of 2010, I visited Arcosanti, Arizona for two weeks as part of a college class. Arcosanti is an experimental village in the Sonoran Desert designed by the Italian Architect Paulo Soleri. More specifically, it is a small model of an arcology. This is a city concept that Soleri invented but I will avoid that tangent for now. It could, and might someday, be an entire blog post of its own. Arcosanti is a portmanteau of Arcology and Cosanti. Cosanti was the name of Soleri’s first experimental village project. Cosanti itself is an Italian portmanteau (roughly) of cosa and anti. It basically means against things, because he wanted his architecture to enable a minimalist lifestyle for its inhabitants. Arcosanti then is a merger of this minimalist anti-consumer vision with the ecological architecture of arcology. I swear that this etymology of the location is relevant, because it was at Arcosanti that I saw a “free store” for the first time. It was the size of a multicar garage and filled with shelves of books, clothes, tools, art supplies, and all sorts of odds and ends. It was open and available to everyone in the village at any time. No one needed to supervise it because the village was small and there was no risk of any free items being “stolen.” I think I may have taken a book, but I don’t remember anymore. It was a wonderful sight and it again reminded me of the really really free market. The free store was a perfect expression of the minimalist, ecological and community values of Arcosanti.
I did look up really really free markets in Kansas City, but I don’t remember exactly when I did. I remember seeing the Wikipedia article about the movement and that many cities had their own. By 2010 though, all I could find in Kansas City was a blog about a really really free market that ran for a few years but stopped posting in 2006. I would first attempt to start one near the end of 2010. That’s right, some readers may know that RRFMKC began in 2017, but fewer know that there was a previous attempt. On September 25th 2010, I would start a Really Really Free Market in Frank A. Theis Park. Even writing that now, it seems to conflict with my memories of the time, but I’ve saved the file of my original poster and it includes the whole 2010 schedule.
The name and the hand version of the chasing arrows symbols was inspired by what I had seen in Winona. The last Saturday of the month was chosen to fit with my school schedule and to enable me to promote the event at Critical Mass bike rides which are held on the last Friday of each month. Critical Mass bike rides also inspired my original unsuccessful approach to how to manage and promote the market. Critical Mass is a monthly biking event that happens in many cities across the US and around the world. I had hoped that like Critical Mass I could establish a regular time and location and the event could grow in a completely decentralized way. This did not work for me and led to other impediments. Since I did not have space to store items between events and did not want to be thought of as being “in charge” of the event, I told people to set up their own space with their own items and take any leftover things at the end of the event. This was too much time and effort for most people, so very few people wanted to bring donations if they might end up leaving again with most of them after a few hours in the park. So after a few floundering events, I ended my first attempt at a Kansas City really really free market.
The idea would live in my mind for years though while the right conditions never came about. I moved to other apartments in the city, but never had enough space to make storage for the market viable. I was also always too busy. First, it was college. Then, my first job out of college required frequent travel. Then, I had two part time jobs that had me working nearly 60 hours per week.
In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president and inaugurated the next year. It was shocking to me that at the time that his campaign of xenophobia, misogyny, racism, fear, and ignorance could be successful. Almost a decade on, I recognize how naive I was. Alarmed at the state of the world, I wanted some way to build community and help people. I returned to the idea of the really really free market. I finally had the time and space that I needed. I was renting a house in the Blue Hills neighborhood with abundant basement storage space. I had lost one of my jobs in August of 2016 and now had weekends available. I took some time to prepare and waited until nice weather in the spring. I chose Brookside park because it was only a few blocks from my house, was highly visible, and had plenty of foot traffic. Even though I’ve moved out of the neighborhood, I kept the market in Brookside Park because people have come to rely on it being there. I promoted the event at a May Day march through downtown Kansas City and at at the April Critical Mass.
Finally, on May 7th 2017 I held the first Kansas City Really Really Free Market in Brookside park. I had one tote of my own things, a plate of special-k bars, a tray of vegetable sprouts, and a handmade sign bluntly announcing “free stuff.” The first event was humble but successful. 10 people attended. Four people, including me, brought things out to the park. It was also when I first met Kansas City Food Not Bombs. It has now been nearly 9 years. We’ve never missed a month and the community of volunteers and visitors continues to grow. There have been many more stories in that time which I’ll share in future blog posts. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to many more years of the Kansas City Really Really Free Market.