Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025 marked the 42nd annual Holiday Street Fair on Telegraph Avenue. This year, the street fair is scheduled to be on the first three weekends of December. Similar to past years, it will be located on Telegraph between the cross streets of Bancroft and Dwight, only five blocks east of Berkeley High School. The market is home to over 200 local vendors with a wide variety of goods and merchandise for visitors to browse and shop from. The fair is a great opportunity to find unique and locally made gifts for your loved ones this holiday season.
One of the primary features of the street fair is handmade and locally crafted products. There’s a wide range of these unique handcrafted goods such as handmade jewelry, custom press on nails, crocheted goods, and more. There was even one vendor who takes old books that would have been thrown away and repurposes them into notebooks with the cover of the original book being the new cover of the notebook. Another stand called Bart Bridge makes baseball hats with the names of places in California and an image that is associated with that place. For example, the Berkeley hat has an embroidered University of California, Berkeley campus Campanile. Aviv Elis, a sophomore at BHS, mentioned her favorite vendor that she saw, “There’s a really cute store where all the succulents were pink.”
Another main focus of the fair is vintage and secondhand clothing. The last block is full of vendors with curated collections of thrifted clothes and accessories. There’s a wide variety of prices for whatever works with your budget, prices range from 10 dollars to around 50 dollars per item. Although this is on the pricier side for second hand clothing, all of the clothes help support small businesses and are curated to be good quality and fashionable. Also, some vendors had bins of clothing that were more of a hunt to find pieces but the items were much cheaper. On average these bins had a price of five dollars per item. Siena Ingraham, a BHS sophomore, mentioned the clothing section of the market. She said, “It’s a lot of window shopping for me ... It’s a lot of different things. And I like the exit. There’s a lot of clothes at the end, which were really tempting me.”
In terms of holiday spirit, the market was more subtle with its holiday theme but there was Christmas music playing and there were vendors that had holiday-centered items. Elis said, “It was a nice, kind of cozy place where people were just hanging out.” Elis also mentioned seeing ornaments that looked like mini houses. Zephyr Graham, a sophomore at BHS, said, “not what you would expect from a Christmas related gathering. But (there were) crochet Christmas trees. I saw a lot of secondhand clothing, which was very Berkeley. I saw a lot of crafts and a lot of very cool things.” On the overall atmosphere, Graham said, “I would say that (the street fair) brings the holiday spirit.”
Although some of the items are on the pricier side, purchases mean a lot to the vendors who spend countless hours making these one-of-a-kind goods or curating a perfect inventory with options for everyone. Many vendors are family businesses or someone that loves sharing their passion at markets like these. Not only is attending the festival a great way to support local small businesses, everything sold would make for unique creative gifts. Graham said, “It’s good. It’s pricey, but it’s good. But that’s the whole point, you know?” He continued by saying, “I would recommend it to anyone who really likes crafts or needs to get a gift for someone and has a little bit of money in their back pocket.” Graham added that it’s a great experience with friends and ended by saying, “it was really just a great time.”
Telegraph’s holiday street fair was a very memorable event showcasing a wide variety of unique vendors and experiences for all who attend. Whether you need a special gift for a friend, delicious holiday treat, or a fun stroll to get in the holiday spirit, Telegraph Avenue’s Holiday Street Fair could be the event for you.