Randolph Street Market Festival

This guide to the Randolph Street Market Festival in Chicago is built around Sally Schwartz, who has spent two decades arranging vendors of chandeliers, taxidermy and vinyl records the way a host seats difficult relatives at a party. It traces the market's start in 2003 as a modest antiques show under a different name, its growth to more than two hundred fifty booths across the West Loop, and Schwartz's stated ambition to design the grounds like a cruise ship. Recent seasons have added swing dancing lessons, a Victorian-style photo booth, and a ukulele-playing clown poet wandering the aisles.