Flea Enterprise

Push a buck underneath the Plexiglas barrier to doorman Kevin Houston and he'll smile, offer thanks and wave you through the single turnstile and into a massive indoor flea market. It resembles a ramshackle Wal-Mart after the revolution, this swarming den of low-rent capitalists. Here a ragtag collection of independent retailers spend weekends peddling an odd assortment of items: from cut-rate hip-hop fashion to jewelry to hunting knives to brass knuckles to sweet scents to used stereos. Welcome to Frison Flea Market, a veritable ghetto Galleria.

Anything goes: knickknacks, Von Dutch and FUBU fashion, framed reproductions, screws, books, bongs, mattresses, nunchucks, DVDs and VCRs. If you're lucky and have a keen shopper's eye, you might stumble across Cindy Sherman's oddball feature film, Office Killer, at Dollar Bill's video store. Or maybe you'll walk out of Jack Frison's market with a fabulous pale green Fred Belay bling-bling watch, all aglitter with a hundred tiny zirconium nuggets. Perhaps before the day is done you'll be wearing a $2,000 diamond cross around your neck.

Within these sprawling confines, 100-plus vendors spread their wares inside a windowless, single-story, yellow-and-maroon building that covers a six-acre slice of Pagedale. They come from all over the world: Korea, India, Gambia, Memphis, Vermont, Wellston. Clocks above the main entrance reinforce the international flavor by offering West Africa, Paris, Korea, New York -- and Frison Flea Market -- time.

Moving and mingling, full of merchandizing ideas spawned by a desire to eke out a profit, vendors test the waters, learn, experiment, share. Some merchants will lock onto your eyes and work the hard sell. Others cast quiet, expectant gazes as they stand behind vast tables awash in throwback jerseys, jackets and the latest Sean John, G-Unit, Hilfiger and booty-poppin' Apple Bottoms apparel.

On a busy spring Saturday voices rumble throughout the makeshift grid that fills the mercantile arena with little avenues and byways. The 2,000 customers who roll through on a typical Friday, Saturday and Sunday scrounge and browse. Vendors haggle. Discounts are cut on the spot. This isn't the Galleria, where cash falls like rain; marketing campaigns consist of new hand-scribbled signs and not much else. It takes ingenuity and hard work to squeeze money out of Pagedale, where disposable income is scarce.

"We provide for these people in this area because they are low-income," says owner Jack Frison. "There will never be a Famous-Barr in this area, because there's nobody here that can afford that."

Every few steps at Frison's, there's a new sensibility; every few paces, a new personality, a new character. Start with Kevin Houston, who owns three Cadillac limousines and was once on the Jenny Jones Show because of his talent for voice manipulation. Answering his phone, he'll sometimes mimic an old granny, and people fall for it. At peak hours Houston's a machine, making change, distributing re-entry tickets, answering the phone and paging over the intercom.

At 98 Ways proprietor Mike Cube occupies a 100-square-foot makeshift unit. Cube has been building model cars since he was seven years old. These days he deals miniature die-cast iron low-riders and luxury vehicles; a few dozen glisten in display cases. He's all thugged out, and the disconnect between his tough exterior and his delicate, introspective craft is palpable. The miniatures are all chrome and sparkle. Cube's partner Reggie has detailed them, balanced the spinning hubcaps, buffed and waxed the luxurious paint jobs and, finally, posed little Homie figurines around each ride.

Turn down a lane and walk past some clothes stalls, and you'll run into Xtra Wholesale, which occupies the largest single plot of land at Frison, about the length and width of four bowling lanes. His hand resting on a rectangular jewelry box, salesman Phil Maestas smiles and asks, "Excuse me, sir, do you have a girlfriend? Does she like pretty things?" He opens the box and inside sits a combination watch, bracelet and earring set with a flying dolphin motif. Famous Barr sells the same set for 60 bucks, he says, but he's prepared to sell it for $40.

With an excitable rasp, Maestas celebrates the deal and urges you to seriously consider this exciting opportunity. He can even throw in a second set for free. And, prince that he is, he'll lower the price to $29.99 because he can tell that you have good taste and appreciate a good deal when you see it. In fact, after a non-committal pause, he can give you both for $19.99.

Walk a few yards more and you hit the fashion zone, which has suffered its share of scrutiny over the years. In 2000 FBI agents, along with police, seized thousands of pieces of this merchandise after an undercover investigation revealed a few vendors trading in counterfeit goods -- cheap FUBU and Hilfiger knockoffs. It happened again on December 15, 2003, after a similar probe was initiated by the Recording Industry Association of America. RIAA, the trade group that represents the major music labels, made charges that four Frison merchants were selling counterfeit music CDs.

With arrest warrants in hand, eight or nine uniformed county cops, a couple of plainclothes detectives and representatives of the RIAA walked through the turnstile and made a beeline for the bootleggers, who were trading in dubbed copies of hit hip-hop records. Jack Frison showed up while the police were confiscating 29,000 CDs, 3,500 DVDs and CD burners that churned out made-to-order crunk mixes. The recording industry believes that Frison must have known about the illegal activity. It's his building, they figured, and he operates the flea market. How could he not know of the illegal activity?