Yew Street Block Party & Misfit Night Market set for Saturday evening on the North Shore

KAMLOOPS — On Saturday (June 17), a stretch of Yew Street, along with a small portion of Tranquille Road, will be home to the Yew Street Block Party and the Misfit Night Market.

“So the Yew Street Block Party is from 3:00 pm until 9:00 pm, and the Mistfit Market is at the Effie Arts Collective, and it’s from 5:00 pm until 10:00 pm, so you can kind of go back and forth,” Patti Phillips, Marketing and PR Director for the North Shore Business Improvement Association (NSBIA) explains. “All of the vendors at the Yew Street Block Party – we have 30 vendors – so they run from Spirit Square all the way down, right up to Tranquille [Road], and also in the Red Beard parking lot… you can go along the sidewalk and do all the shopping.”

Alongside the 30 vendors lined up on Yew Street, the Effie Arts Collective will be jam-packed with around twenty more. Although, the ones at the Effie will have a slightly different flavour.

“We have witchy, more kind of punk vibes, alternative vibes,” Jess Santos, founder of the Misfit Night Market describes. “We’re here to represent an under-represented part of Kamloops, which is the misfit aspect of it.”

The idea behind the Misfit Night Market started in 2019 and has evolved since then. The Mega Misfit Night Market marks the first anniversary of the first-ever night market event Santos hosted at the Effie.

“The Night Market is always all ages, but because there are no windows in the Effie, it does kind of have that like darkened vibe,” Santos explains.

Due to the popularity of the Misfit Night Markets, Santos has now opened up the Haus of Misfit across from The Station on Tranquille Road, where she sells many of the items that are available at the night market events.

“The shop has a very specific vibe,” Santos says. “When I was renovating, ‘Paint it Black’ was in my head a lot, because I was painting everything black.”

The Yew Street Block Party will also be for folks of all ages. That event includes food and drink vendors, as well as a flash tattoo event from the artists at Bigfoot Tattoos.

The NSBIA already has plans to make next year’s block party bigger and better.“For our first year, let’s do it this way, and the next year we’ll get an extra sponsor,” Phillips explains.

“This year we have Amplify Consulting sponsoring us, which is wonderful. We just need a couple more sponsors to help out with that next year.”