The Boise Flea

A Sunday in the East Stadium Lot

On a market Sunday the East Stadium Lot at Boise State University fills with more than 150 vendors of vintage, antique and handmade goods. The lot sits at the corners of Broadway Avenue and University Drive, in front of Albertsons Stadium. Admission is free, and cars pay $5 to park in the lot. The flea runs from 10:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon on the second Sunday of each month, April through October, with bonus Sundays added between. In 2026 the bonus dates fell on May 31, June 28, August 30 and September 27. The October flea closes each year. For the October 11, 2026 market, the last of that season, the organizer announced free parking in the final hour, from 3:00 to 4:00.

Food trucks park at every market, and the organizer lists them with each announcement. Coffee carts pour, among them a Push & Pour cart. Founder and coordinator Erinn Urquiaga has widened the food beyond the trucks. “We’ve been able to add artisanal food vendors; people who sell salsa, sourdough bread; and we’re hoping to add some produce and fresh-cut flowers and plants this year,” she told Boise Weekly in April 2026. “We also have food trucks and push-and-pour coffee so we can keep shoppers happy and they’ll stay longer.” One of the featured vendors is La Crepe Boise, whose owner is named Cammy.

The market’s posts follow the weather and the calendar. The 2026 season opened on April 12 in rain, under the line “Don’t let a little rain get in your way!” The May flea fell on Mother’s Day. On July 12 the posts promised deals “HOTTER than the temperature outside,” and in August they welcomed Boise State students back to school and invited them to “come find your back to school fits.”

Band tees, wicker and Levi’s

Urquiaga calls the Boise Flea “a vintage antique and handcrafted market.” Vendors’ tables carry jewelry, clothing, art and antique home decor. Bailey Neuhaus, founder of Like Neu Treasures, had sold there for four years when Idaho News 6 visited, offering everything from wicker home decor to old band tees. “I’ve really enjoyed getting to know people so now I have like my regulars that come back every year,” she said. One shopper that day had found a pair of Levi’s: “I’m really short as you can see so it’s really cool to find vintage that’s already worn.”

Many of the sellers are young. Urquiaga has said that high school students resell vintage clothing at the flea. “They’ll go and knock on doors and say, hey, do you have any clothes you’d like to sell?” Stephanie Alvis, a Treasure Valley native and curator of How Fortuitous Vintage, has sold at the market since 2019. “It’s huge for my business,” she said. “Not only do I get to come out here and interact with the Boise community, it’s a really great opportunity to network with other vendors.”

Boise State students shop there as well. “The Boise Flea just brought the community to campus, which is so great,” Urquiaga said.

Five vendors on State Street

Urquiaga grew up in Hazelton, Idaho, a small town outside Twin Falls, and went to auctions with her grandparents. In the 1990s she and her mother went thrifting together. In her 20s she went to her first flea market, in San Diego, and in her 30s she sold at the Treasure Valley flea market at the fairgrounds. She was also placing antiques on consignment in small Boise shops, one of them on State Street. That shop’s owner asked its vendors whether anyone wanted to start a flea market. Urquiaga already had rental properties in Twin Falls, and she agreed. “I could rent spaces and I have good communication skills,” she recalled on the Nobody Knowz podcast in June 2026. The first sellers were mostly her friends, her mother and herself.

Accounts of the beginning differ. In 2026 Urquiaga told both the podcast and Boise Weekly that the market started 13 years earlier with about five vendors. She told Idaho News 6 in an earlier interview that she had started it 11 years before with 10 vendors. Another Idaho News 6 story, from around the market’s tenth year, put the starting count at 15.

The early flea stood on West State Street in front of Capital Lumber. Idaho News 6 placed it at 31st and State Street. It stayed there about ten years. Around year seven, Urquiaga has said, the market embraced vintage clothing, “which was kind of becoming a thing.” By its tenth year it drew hundreds of shoppers even on a Sunday when the temperature reached triple digits. It hosted more than 120 vendors, added live music, and scheduled extra summer and fall dates. The lot topped out, by her count, at about 70 vendors. By what would have been October 2023 she needed a new place.

The move to campus

In January 2024 Urquiaga called Boise State’s event coordinator on a Saturday and met the university’s head of parking on the Monday after. She has said the university told her it had always wanted to bring the community onto its campus. The first flea in the East Stadium Lot was held on April 14, with more than 100 vendors, food trucks and the Push & Pour cart. By May 2024 the market supported, in Urquiaga’s words, “over 150 small businesses in our community.” The 2026 season was its third on campus.

Her reasons for the work are concrete. She described pulling open the drawer of an old table to look at the dovetails joining front to sides, and asked of such a table, “Who had dinner at that table? Who wrote a letter at that table?” Her training is in school and mental health counseling. She has said the market began purely from her love of old things and grew into a way to support small businesses.

A brocante on the old ground

In October 2025 the flea finished its 12th season. Patrons of the big market had asked for a smaller one focused on antique home and garden goods, and Urquiaga had seen that style at the flea markets of Paris. On November 9, 2025 she previewed Idaho Brocante on the old Boise Flea ground at 3011 W. State Street. It was set to run on third Sundays from April through October 2026, with true antiques and vintage-feel pieces, along with some jewelry and art. In September 2026 the Brocante announced its return “from our les grandes vacances,” with food trucks, coffee from Mt Crate Cafe, and vendors bringing “truckloads” of home and garden pieces.

Of the market at the stadium, Urquiaga told Boise Weekly, “It is my favorite day of the month.”