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Queens Night Market to Debut in Jamaica This Fall

By Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska | August 7, 2015 9:00am | Updated on August 10, 2015 8:47am
 Beginning September, the market will be held on 168th Street, near Jamaica Avenue.
Queens Night Market Moves From Corona Park to Jamaica
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QUEENS — The Queens Night Market, which launched earlier this year at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, will soon debut in downtown Jamaica.

The fair, which offers the opportunity to shop in the evening for crafts and food from local vendors, will “add cultural vibrancy to the nightlife" in Jamaica, said John Wang, 33, the market’s organizer.

Since it launched in April the Queens Night Market, which is open every Saturday from 6 p.m. to midnight, has been attracting hundreds of people with its international foods from Chinese and Hungarian to Greek and Thai, a variety of crafts and live music, the organizers said.

The market, which will stay in Flushing Meadows Corona Park until Aug. 15, has to relocate before the upcoming U.S. Open, Wang said.

The fair will kick off in Jamaica on Sept. 5 and will be held on the parking lot on 168th Street, between 90th and Jamaica avenues, where it will remain until the end of the season on October 31.

Night markets, which are popular in many Asian countries, are gaining popularity in New York. In Queens, many of the bazaar's customers come from neighborhoods like Flushing and Bayside, which is why Wang said he was initially worried about moving it to more remote Southeast Queens.  

But Wang said he believes the market will also soon become a popular attraction in downtown Jamaica.

Next year, he hopes to keep both locations, with the market open in Jamaica on Fridays and in Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Saturdays.

He said most merchants will remain the same after the move this fall, but he also hopes "to attract many new food vendors and artists from the local area to help highlight the surrounding community’s economic and cultural assets." 

“We welcome the Night Market as one more way to showcase all that Downtown Jamaica has to offer those who live, work and visit our vibrant neighborhood,” said Hope Knight, president of the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, a local nonprofit which worked with Wang to bring the market to Jamaica.