Bazaar Del Mundo

This guide to Bazaar del Mundo in San Diego's Old Town follows Diane Powers, a design school graduate with no market experience, who in nineteen seventy-one was the only bidder with a plan to redevelop a condemned property called the Casa de Pico Motel. Rather than fill the courtyard with souvenirs, she built it around working craftspeople on a two-month deadline from the state park, from Mata Ortiz potters throwing coiled pottery to Oaxacan wood carvers making painted alebrijes and weavers setting up looms for wool textiles. Listen for how a single Mexican village's craft found buyers an ocean and a border away, in what became one of Old Town's busiest gathering spots.