City Market
Pat and I made our first trek to the Charlottesville City Market today. It was an adventure in many ways: family, friends, food, fun, and a few other f-words (but not that f-word, nope).
For that lone reader who’s not familiar with the C’ville scene, City Market is a euphemism for a parking lot filled with small-business vendors. I don’t know if the developers modeled it after Eugene’s famed (notorious?) Saturday Market, but it has a bit of that feel; it does not have as many vendors, occupy as much space, or offer as wide an array of items as Saturday Market, but it’s got scores of stalls offering food (to eat now or take home), jewelry, handicrafts, politics, and etc. with sidewalk musicians, balloons, and frivolity. Now, my baseline is from the Eugene Saturday Markets of the 1970s, so I may be off target in several ways.
Anyway, Pat and I discussed walking (I was thinking of cycling, but only one of us has bikes [yes, I now have two; sending later post]), but we abandoned that idea after we estimated that it was a 45-60 walk. We wanted to get there early enough to avoid the crowds and to see Corey. So we drove the ~2 miles.
Parking nearby was an adventure. We probably extended that ~2 miles by ~0.5 miles finding a place to park. We are now more savvy about how people park in the vicinity on Saturdays. Adherence to the rules seems a bit flexible on Sat. AM near the market.
We walked the path among the stalls a couple of times. I got coffee. Pat chatted with friends. We got some berries, flowers, habanero peppers, and free cheese. All in all, it was a good time.
Local folks will all be well ahead of us on this, as we’ve just moved into the city. However, for those who’re looking to learn a bit about Charlottesville’s City Market, here are some links:
- The Charlottesville City Parks and Recreation group’s home page for the market;
- The city’s page referring to the market;
- A page from Local Harvest about the C’ville market (check the LH site for local markets in your area);
- The Virginia buy-local folks’ page about markets in various locales; and
- A major shout-out to Planet Earth Diversified for its efforts to develop, promote, and sustain the market.
