If you've ever driven through the Market, you've seen them there, adding a vibrant touch to the corner of 8th & Oak. In fact if you've ever driven anywhere in Eugene you've seen them hanging from car mirrors, from porches, in windows, anywhere that can use a splash of color - Neil Friedman's Fresh Picked Rainbows. Last summer Neil got tired of his old traditional wooden Market booth and started over, literally from the wheels up. He knew he wanted a booth on wheels, figured a built in storage box would be helpful, and just kept going up from there. What he ended up with is a compact yet airy booth that's a cross between a traditional Italian Market cart and ye olde Eugene Market Booth, at the end of a whole lot of rainbows. The wooden frame shows the cascading strings to their best advantage, up in the sunlight, waving in the breeze, and out of reach to sticky and pizza covered little fingers. At the end of the day, it all tucks away neatly and rolls off into the sunset.

Neil has been selling his rainbow strings at Market since 1982. These simple, beautiful streamers are entirely hand crafted. Neil and Sally start with white rayon string, dying it in 50 pound batches, and spending quiet evenings at home untangling and untangling and untangling... He fashions the rings from brass welding rods, and the wooden frames from 1x4s. The rainbows come in three sizes, and in variations like gold with om, and the new red, white and blue version.

You can find Neil and Sally at the end of their rainbows nearly every Saturday at the south east corner of 8th & Oak. They look good on the web, but it's much more pleasurable to see the rainbows dance in person, so pay them a visit!