Artist’s Other Calling

It’s Wednesday morning at the farmers’ market in Santa Monica, and the customers are lined up at the sprout table 10 at a time, two rows deep, while The Dark Bob, a darkly handsome performance artist and sprout salesman, keeps up a running commentary over the sprouted clover, onion, wheat grass, mung beans, peas and sunflower seeds.

“What am I taking your money for?” he asks a woman who hands him a $5 bill.

“How do you charge for this?” he wonders, as he futilely tries to weigh a tablespoon of sprouted beans for a woman whose son needs sprouts for a science project.

“Here,” he says, handing her the bag without charge.

A young man asks to sample some radish sprouts in the back row.

“Be my guest,” The Dark Bob says. “Just don’t crawl over the table.”

When business slacks off, The Dark Bob cups his hands and calls out to the shoppers streaming up and down Second Avenue. “Free samples of our sprout nut spread. No salt, no cholesterol. It’s high in protein, low in calories. It won’t make you fat, prepared by a chef. It tastes delicious. What else can I say?”

The Dark Bob is one of half a dozen artists who work for Sproutime, selling sprouts at farmers’ markets from Burbank to Santa Monica and to the Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Foods Markets.

They are great sales people--dedicated, enthusiastic and energetic, says Sproutime founder Leslie Labowitz.

They are also somewhat “fussy,” says Bruce Sneath, Sproutime’s former operations manager. “Most are vegetarian. They are extremely concerned about quality. If they won’t eat it, they don’t want to sell it.”

In short, Sneath says, “they are temperamental. You might think if they had a complaint, they could be nice about it. But a typical phone call goes, ‘What is this crap?’ ”

“It’s a great job for an artist,” The Dark Bob says. “You are your own boss. You don’t have to punch a time clock. If necessary you can go on tour for weeks at a time, and when you come back, your job is still there. When you are working, the hours go by so fast it doesn’t even feel like work. The table is attacked. I am left in shreds, and then I go home in the middle of the day. It is a perfect job for someone who doesn’t want to have a job.”