It’s a tradition unlike any other. No, not the Masters Tournament: the East End’s own Little Market, a kid-only maker market that is returning to Jefferson Avenue this Sunday to give the neighborhood’s smallest hustlers a place to pursue their big dreams—on this cosmic plane, or the next.

“Somebody's doing fortune-telling this year,” said Sarah Blackburn, a Church Hill parent of three and the organizer of the Little Market, which did its inaugural run in the parking lots of Pizza Bones and Challenge Discovery Projects in November 2025. We spoke by phone about the return of the market, which will take place this Sunday, April 12th from noon to 3pm. “I'm really excited about aura portraits are coming back. That was a really popular one last time,” she added.

For the uninitiated, the Little Market emerged from a problem familiar to parents since time immemorial: how to encourage children’s creativity and work ethic while keeping things fun. Blackburn conceived of the concept last year when it dawned on her that her two eldest—Simon, 10, and Fisher, 7—had perhaps maxed out the “addressable market” of the folks on their street. “They are forever trying to do, like, a lemonade stand on our front porch, and things of that nature,” she told me last year. We were sort of feeling bad for our neighbors always getting solicited.”

Much like last autumn’s event, this one is only for the youngest artists and makers among us. Blackburn circulated a signup form last month and earlier this month—which you may have seen here in The Lookout—soliciting “Little Vendors elementary or middle school aged, and that live or go to school in the East End.” (Alas, at 37, she confirmed I’m just a smidge too old to be hawking Lookout hats.) “We have 31 families signed up so far; that’s a little over 40 kids,” she said, adding that only 19 of this iteration’s “Little Vendors” had participated in the first kiddo bazaar. This go-round, there will once again be all sorts of goods and services on offer. In addition to the aforementioned supernatural forecasts, expect custom sculptures, face-painting, and other creative expressions of the next generation’s great talents.

“There was some legitimately really cool artwork that we got that we have in our house now and really enjoy it,” said Blackburn. High praise, that: while parents may be obligated to hang up their own children’s doodles, they certainly aren’t obligated to hang up somebody else’s.

With signups consistent from the November market to the upcoming one, Blackburn hopes that over time the concept will continue to expand. “Someday it'd be cool to close the street,” she said. In the meantime, the parental supporters—are they unpaid employees?—of The Little Market’s majorly motivated minors will once again be flagging traffic on Jefferson Ave. to slow down motorists and keep shoppers and vendors alike safe as they cross between the two lots this Sunday. Kids being kids, a lot of the proceeds from their sales at The Little Market got “reinvested” directly into purchases at their neighborhood pals’ booths. This is the circular economy, to me. One assumes that cycle will repeat apace this Sunday.

But in Blackburn’s house, this Little Market will mark the debut of a new financing system: unlike November, her boys had to foot the cost for their April inventory themselves. “We provided them seed money the first time, but they are purchasing their own materials this time,” she said, laughing. No longer spending their angel investors’ capital, Simon and Fisher have rejiggered their offerings a bit with an eye towards controlling overhead.

The kids of the East End are still alright, and they’ll still take Venmo. Once they get the hang of COGS, though, the neighborhood’s Little Marketeers will be ready to take even bigger swings.

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

This morning, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Samuel B. Parker published a big scoop revealing how longtime East Ender and current Richmond Mayor Danny Avula coordinated earlier this year with City Hall staffers and the Richmond Police Department to cook up a charm offensive for Flock Safety.

“I think we need to start trying to saturate the public narrative with stories where [the] real-time crime center, LPR, gunshot detection, etc. have changed the outcome,” the mayor texted press secretary Mira Signer, RPD Chief Rick Edwards, chief administrative officer Odie Donald II, and City Hall communications director Ross Catrow on January 28th, noting that he’d been “thinking about some of the media requests we’re getting about Flock.”

Documents obtained by Parker via public-records request suggest it was my reporting for both The Lookout and The Richmonder that prompted City Hall’s message-massaging on Flock.

As part of The Lookout’s ongoing reporting on Flock, a controversial surveillance system marketed by a for-profit company that is backed by right-wing billionaires including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, I contacted Signer in September 2025 to inquire whether Avula still supported RPD’s use of the system after Edwards admitted that it had been improperly accessed by federal agents for immigration enforcement earlier that summer. Four months later, as I reported out an investigation for The Richmonder about how much RPD has spent on Flock systems (answer: over a million bucks and counting) I again contacted Signer, and also reached out to RPD spokesperson James Mercante.

The text of my inquiries to those city officials is a verbatim match with the text that appears in light gray in the documents Parker uncovered (circled in red above), and the dates of the inquiries listed in the documents align with my outreach. Notably, after I contacted the officials in January 2026, RPD began explicitly touting its use of Flock in official press releases. Those dispatches were uncritically regurgitated by WTVR and other outlets, assisting Avula and Edwards’ efforts to seed friendly coverage for their nine-figure surveillance network as activists from organizations like the Richmond Democratic Socialists of America, Americans for Civil Liberties of Virginia, and Justice Forward Virginia expanded their campaign asking the mayor to “block Flock” over concerns for privacy, abuse, and racialized policing.

Since this publication’s very first edition, The Lookout’s litter critter-at-large Penelope Poubelle has stalked the main streets and back alleys of the East End seeking trash to eat and tableaus (of trash) to inspire more Possum Poetry. Hardened by life in the urban jungle, our jester of junk favors bad verse to good news. But sometimes one leads to the other.

On March 27th, I received an email from reader Audrey Zaftos with the photo of the baby booties you see above, which belong to her toddler, Phoebe. The one on the left looks much worse for wear because, much like Penelope Poubelle, it had spent some time on the street. In fact, our bard of basura crossed paths with the sullied shoe; it was the subject of Possum Poetry from March 6th.

“I saw your newsletter immediately and knew it was [Phoebe’s] shoe!” wrote Zafros. “She’s 17 months [so] she had no idea.”

Zafros was kind enough to provide a photo of ace shoe-flinger Phoebe (above right.) “I would have shared a picture [of her] with the shoe reunited but… it’s pretty gross,” she added.

At publication, Penelope Poubelle could not be reached for comment. (The nocturnality makes her pretty difficult to get ahold of.) But in my capacity as her editor, I can confidently say she’d be pleased.

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

Want to share your Very CHill Photo from the neighborhood? Email it to [email protected] with your name as you’d like it to appear for publication, and the camera you shot it on.