Meetup on Main, a grassroots-led market in Skokie with the feel of a block party, is back for its third season. The collective, organized by Meetup on Main’s founder and Village Trustee Lissa Levy, has more collaborations with the village and local groups than it has ever had before, according to Levy.
The first of this season’s Meetup on Main events, located near the intersection of Main Street and Keystone Avenue, was held on June 2, and it will run every Monday in June from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., rain or shine, according to Levy.
One of the new additions to Meetup on Main is the Village of Skokie’s Makers’ Mart. Located inside The Storefront, a village-owned property at 4051 Main Street, vendors have space to sell an assortment of handmade goods and artwork including jewelry, pottery, ceramics, sweet treats, tote bags, illustrations, photography and fine art.
Makers’ Mart is scheduled to be onsite for Meetup on Main on June 16 and June 30 from 5 to 8 p.m.
As Meetup on Main has continued to grow, highlighting neighbors’ desire to establish an economic and social hub on Skokie’s Main Street corridor, Levy said she is doing more to delegate the responsibilities of running the summer market by assigning someone else to be an onsite manager this season. This season also has more food trucks, she said, including newcomers La Humita On Wheels, Bumbu Roux and Cousins Maine Lobster and returning vendors Soul Good Coffee and Kona Ice.
Meetup on Main’s success has partly been credited to the village’s interest in revitalizing Main Street. Just across the street from Meetup on Main will be the site of Soul Good Coffee and Zelda’s Catering, two Skokie staples. At last year’s Meet up on Main, village officials shared a comprehensive 20+ year vision of development that neighbors said they would like to see on the corridor, largely creating more social spaces, businesses and homes.
At its height, Meetup on Main has had up to 325 attendees on a single day, Levy said, and its popularity has encouraged her to do similar projects outside of Main Street in other parts of Skokie.
“The project of Meet up on Main was really about creating this proof of concept that if you put anything on Main Street, people would come out, and they did, and it’s been really much more successful than I anticipated at the beginning,” Levy said.
“And so in my mind, that was kind of the the project,” Levy said of the village’s and neighbors’ invested time and efforts to re-develop Main Street.
“It’s really great to have places and spaces where we can create community, but if development happens on Main Street, it will happen organically over time — and so maybe we don’t need to be there so much anymore, and then it frees up resources and ideas for other places in Skokie that do need activation.”
