On and about L.A.

 

 

 

 

 

Rock and roll, baby girl. You can do it. It’s all in your head.” …so said a street drifter in Beverly Hills as I was hurrying blindly towards my car. Silly as it may seem, those words did cheer me up, and they made me aware of just how much I was in my head at that moment – I hadn’t even see the guy as I walked past. As it turns out, it was a beautiful late afternoon, the air smelled of blossoming tress and there was plenty to observe on the boulevard: people sitting and talking in cafes, Japanese teens with mullet haircuts dressed head to toe in Chanel, a pug with a bejeweled collar sniffing the air…

Speaking of sniffing the air, I turn my attention now to an article that appeared in last Wednesday’s L.A. Times food section and sent a chill or horror down my spine. Russ Parsons wrote about the future of farmers’ markets, which is to say that they may become a thing of the past. Why? Because, as Howell Tumlin, executive director of the Southland Farmers’ Market Assn., is quoted as saying, “As a business model, farmers markets couldn’t be more inefficient.” Farming is generally a lean operation, and farmers are spending so much time driving to the various markets scattered all over the southland (Parsons counts close to 100) that they have little time left over for their fields and groves. remember my first lesson in farmers’ market economics, when my favorite farmer confessed that he was selling all his fresh shell beans directly to area restaurants, rather than holding back a few pounds for people like me. Hey, I thought, what about me? Do I now have to go to restaurants and pay their jacked up prices for something I take so much pleasure in cooking at home? But when you look at it from the farmer’s perspective, you just have to understand. What if I don’t show up that week? What if a pound or two doesn’t fit my budget? The restaurant is a bird in the hand. And I am not the safest bet, even I have to admit (I should say, however, that they do bring fresh shell beans to market more and more often, perhaps because the restaurants have made them so popular). Though so far I have lost only one favorite farmer to the full time restaurant supply trade (and they do show up in the summer with their surplus of magnificent heirloom tomatoes), my friend Mary has had to say good-bye to several beloved farmers, because of the economics of selling at Ferry Plaza in San Francisco, which started up as a block of vendors and has now turned into a foodie mecca, replete with permanent shops and restaurants selling everything from gourmet chocolate to olive oil to Christmas cakes imported from Emilia-Romagna, Italy – all at premium prices. My market isn’t nearly so grand. In fact it’s a little funky, as befits its Hollywood neighborhood, which at 8AM on a Sunday, is barely getting over last night’s after hours party when the farmers roll in with their trucks. What will happen if the farmers’ markets lose their farmers to Econ 101? No one is proposing that they sell exclusively to restaurants and grocers, though Whole Foods is making a big push towards local and sustainable, and sports banners with profiles of the farmers they buy from in their produce aisles. There are several concepts being floated, one of which is Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA. Customers are charged an annual fee, and in return receive weekly produce deliveries. As the Times points out, this model demands that customers share financial risk with the farmer. For instance, a killing freeze like last winter’s might mean more beets than berries. Too much rain, and the rapini might not arrive on cue. After years of weekly visits to farmers’ markets, I’ve already learned this lesson, so no problem there. But while I will happily participate in a CSA, I would be profoundly sorry to see the farmers’ market go. Especially in a city like Los Angeles that is short on community, the Hollywood Farmers’ Market is a community I’ve belonged to for 15 years. Every Sunday morning I drive into Hollywood and buy my food for the week (“bean church” a friend once called it). I‘ve watched kids grow, farms come and go and expand, and I’ve even mourned deaths. The elderly Asian woman whole doled out her luscious Persian mulberries in little tubs, only two per customer, and whose family may have sold her farm, is missed every summer. Dee Dee Throgmartin, an original vendor who threw over her Hollywood career to farm some acres in Riverside and who brought garlic, heirloom vegetables, topical political banter and plans for cheese making to market when cancer got the better of her, is a great loss to the community. I’ve watched trendy vegetables become commonplace. I’ve seen celebrities bagging vegetables without their make-up on. I’ve even adopted kittens from a rescue station at that market. I’ve also watched a street fair vibe infiltrate the market that I’m not crazy about and I try to ignore (I hate the smell of processed lavender oil and patchouli canceling out the smell of greens). But I can’t argue about the stalls serving delicious street foods from L.A.’s multitude of ethnic communities; Salvadorian pupusas, spicy Thai pancakes, Korean kim chee. After my shopping, I love to get some breakfast, and watch the trannies mingle with the Hollywood types sporting their in vitro twins in designer prams.

Can I get that with a CSA?

 

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