Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.

BATTLE CREEK, MI — Adam Brandt has always lived outside of the social norms. As a kid growing up in a farming community in the Grand Rapids area, he was often made fun of and never felt accepted by his peers who embraced more mainstream interests.
 
Last May he introduced a new event in Battle Creek to give self-described weirdos like himself a place where they find acceptance, kindred spirits, and merchandise that speaks to them. He has dubbed this gathering the Battle Creek Punk Rock Flea Market which hosted its second event on September 29 at Kellogg Arena.
 
Brandt, who has lived in Battle Creek for about 20 years, says he had been aware of the concept for some time and knew about a large Punk Rock Flea Market in Trenton, New Jersey. After watching a TikTok segment about a similar flea market in Florida, he was ready to bring the concept closer to home because “there really wasn’t one around here.”
 
Dallas McCullochPunk Rock Flea Market Organizer Adam Brandt speaks at the event.He applied for and received a Make Battle Creek More Awesome Grant for $3,000 through Penetrator Events and began planning the city and likely the southwest Michigan region’s first-ever flea market focused on Punk Rock.
 
“I would have been happy with 12 vendors and booking some bands because we were doing something cool,” Brandt says.
 
His initial expectation was “blown out of the water” when he ended up with between 50 and 55 vendors and even more bands than he had initially anticipated.
 
During his initial planning, he had plotted out where he could fit the first wave of 24 vendors under the awning at Festival Market Square.
 
“I had to close off the vendor registration and put them on the street because the Festival Market space got filled up so quickly,” Brandt says.
 
Morgan MattinglyThe interest caught him off guard in a good way and was a sign that there was an appetite for these types of events.
 
The second and most recent Punk Rock Flea Market was held at Kellogg Arena and featured 121 vendors from Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio who were selling everything from glass-blown items to books, records, jewelry, and taxidermy, most with a Punk edge to them. There also were more bands performing this time around.
 
Among the vendors that surprised Brandt was a movie production company selling prosthetic limbs with a Punk flair.
 
“It was kind of crazy. It was almost hard to wrap my head around what all was there” he says. “If you couldn’t find something there that you were looking for, you weren’t looking in the right spots.”
 
Morgan MattinglyThis reporter was unable to find a definition for Punk Rock Flea Market, but a post on WWRV, an alternative radio station in New York’s Hudson Valley says: “The Punk Rock Flea Market is the place to shop for awesome clothing, records, crafts, art, and most of all old punk junk! It looks like all my college friends from the music department selling some old merch in order to finance their upcoming DYI Basement Show Tour.”

“Everybody knows what a flea market is. When I was growing up there was a flea market in a parking lot that had everything from car parts to clothes to records,” Brandt says. “We are doing that same thing with an edge to it.  The artwork is a little darker and spookier. It’s essentially a lot like a normal flea market with a macabre edge to it and there are punk bands playing all over the state now. As we grow and get a name going, we’ll be able to book more bands. There’s not a lot of punk rock in Battle Creek.”
 
Punk rock springs from a myriad of local scenes, and is as much about the music as it is about the venues where it is performed, the audiences and listeners who participate in its performance, clothes and style, politics and approaches to the world, according to a National Public Radio story.
 
“The term “punk” has a long queer history predating its use in contemporary music,” the story says. “A "punk" has always meant a person up to something disreputable and socially deviant. In Shakespeare's English, it meant a female prostitute; later it also connoted young men who sold sex to older men. Punk and queer are a match made in the gutter. Punk rock embraces this abject status. It celebrates it and rejects the society that rejects it. It is all about bad behavior, anarchy, anti-sociality, and noise. It is about claiming freedom from dulling and hypocritical normative pressures. In other words, punk is queer.”
 
Morgan MattinglyBattle Creek Pride was a vendor at both flea markets. Kim Langridge, former Co-President of the organization, says the first one was “great,"  but the second one was “awesome.”
 
“The vibe was awesome and everyone was just so up and friendly and happy to be there,” she says.
 
In keeping with the spirit and intent of the event, Brandt’s number one rule is that hate of any kind won’t be tolerated. This is spelled out in a welcome letter sent to participating vendors and bands.
 
“You can’t be hateful of any kind. We don’t accept anything like that,” he says.
 
Punk finds a home
 
Brandt moved to Battle Creek for the woman who would become his wife.  He works full-time in manufacturing and is a father. He doesn’t have spiked hair, or wear leather or spikes or studs and chains all of which are a common look in the Punk world.
 
“People have stereotypes of punk rock and punks being very aggressive. There is some of that, but not all punks wear spikes and we want to be loved just like anybody else. I’m a big, bearded teddy bear,” he says.
 
Although he totally embraces his own weird and unconventional ways now, it wasn’t always like this.
 
Morgan Mattingly“I was one of the weird kids and I didn’t have a place to go for a while. I want to make sure someone like me has a place to go and feels accepted, especially if they’re kids.“
 
Giving Punk a safe space in Battle Creek is now part of the growth Brandt has watched in his adopted hometown in the last few decades. When he first moved here there were three things he immediately noticed that were missing: his beloved Pabst Blue Ribbon beer on tap, Slurpee’s from 7-Eleven, and Punk Rock. Now the city has all three of his “must-haves”.
 
“If you want to retain people, you have to appeal to a wider range of interests and demographics. If someone likes being weird and weird stuff, what’s to say they won’t move to Lansing or Detroit which both have Punk Rock Flea Markets.”
 
He knows what he’s doing resonates with a certain segment of the community which craves the unusual and unexpected which is the only motivation he needs to organize the flea markets. He is both the boss and the only employee. His parents and some of their friends help him run his merchandise booth, hand out maps, and keep an eye on things.
 
To prevent flea market fatigue from setting in with people, Brandt would like to offer one flea market in the Fall and one in the Spring.
 
“I don’t want people to get bored with it. I want it to be something people look forward to,” he says.