Park Silly Sunday ... an open air market

Those silly girls . . . Locals Kimberly Kuehn, Jewels Harrison and Julie Doerr-Arenson have created a Main Street market that’s become the street fair to emulate. Word of the Park Silly Sunday Market, going into its third summer in June, has spread throughout the country. These days the trio is fielding calls from places like Burlington, Vermont; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Connecticut; and even Ogden, asking how they have been able to pull off hosting this open air market and street festival featuring regional arts and crafts, music and performance art, antiques, imports, farmers market produce, nonprofit booths and more.

Don’t be silly. It has not been easy.

The Park Silly Sunday Market was born of the desire of the three Park City transplants for a place where locals could reconnect on a regular basis. Following the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, Park City began to grow at an unprecedented pace. The Wednesday Concerts in the Park, which had for so many years served as a locals’ link up, had gotten unwieldy and had to be moved from City Park to Deer Valley. Harrison says the move cost the event that laid-back, catch-up-with-everyone, hang-out-all-afternoon-and-all-night feel.

“There were tons of events in town, but nothing that served to glue the community together,” Harrison says. “I was determined never to move again, and we needed to find a way to keep that magic of our community alive.”

Harrison is originally from Iowa, but moved to Park City from Florida, by way of Boulder, Colorado and North Carolina. She says she figuratively lost her neighbors in Boulder. But she found them in Park City.

Kuehn literally lost friends in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. “I was in New York City. I knew about 16 people that were in the World Trade Center,” she says, tearing up. “I just packed up my things in my car and left.”

Kuehn interviewed for a job with the Salt Lake Organizing Committee before the Olympics. She didn’t take the job, but didn’t leave Park City, either. “I just wanted to make a difference in a smaller community. I knew when I moved here, I could make a difference.”

Julie Doerr-Arenson moved to Park City from Philadelphia, which she not so affectionately calls the City of Bodily Harm. She came to Park City to visit friends early in this decade and felt like she’d come to “Who-Ville. This was a backdrop for a Hallmark movie.” Doerr-Arenson told her Park City friends how fortunate they were to live in a place where no matter what you did for a living, how old you were, or whether or not you had kids, you could hang with the community. She didn’t have that in Philadelphia, and she wanted it. Meeting her prospective husband here sort of clinched the deal.