Farmer’s Market Delivers Harvest of Food, Community

Six days a week you can find a tailor, a cappuccino, a piece of garlic naan bread or a picture frame on this short little San Fernando Valley street. On the seventh day, you find the rest: oro blanco grapefruits, bright green rapini, desert globe artichokes, purple cabbages.

The Studio City Farmer’s Market turns this stretch of the Valley into a perfect patch of produce, plants and flowers, a panoply of delights. Some of the vendors--they range from 55 to 60, depending on the week--are organic farmers, others not.

Some drive directly from Oxnard berry farms, some wait for truckloads from Stockton and other places near and far before setting up shop on the funny little street called Ventura Place that runs between Laurel Canyon and Ventura boulevards.

On a good Sunday, organizers say, 3,000 to 4,000 people walk through the market. When the weather cooperates, the market can hit $30,000 in gross sales, which ranks the Studio City market behind Santa Monica’s two markets, as well as those in Hollywood and Westwood. So take that, Beverly Hills and Calabasas.

Even on a rainy Sunday morning, stalls are filled with sweet strawberries ($5 for three baskets), raspberry blood oranges ($1.25 a pound), red chard ($1 a bunch), sweet thin carrots ($1 for six) and Italian flat parsley (50 cents a bunch). Not to mention the fist-sized, super-sweet yams (75 cents a pound) and the apple-cherry-pomegranate juice that tastes like a delicious, grown-up Popsicle.

“Have breakfast on us today, folks,” says one vendor putting out trays of sweet tangeloes, Pink Lady apples and bright orange tangerines. “It’s happy hour.”

They’re lucky I’m alone today, otherwise my children could easily clean out those trays if my attention was diverted by the sight of an orange tomato or something equally appealing.

(With one child who considers himself--in his parlance--”a fruit-etarian” and another who consumes just as much of the stuff, these trips to the Farmer’s Market are as good, well, almost, as a trip to the toy store. Even when I go alone, they put in their requests: more strawberries, more blood oranges, more Fuji apples and more apple-cherry juice.)

This gem of a market may not be the size of Hollywood’s or Santa Monica’s, maybe it doesn’t have as many types of goat cheese and maybe fewer of Los Angeles’ well-known chefs shop here, but Studio City’s market is really the perfect fit. In its relatively small way, it is still part Campo dei Fiori in Rome (the vendors encouraging you to try and buy) and part Grand Central Market downtown (a wide array of fruits available all year).

But like anything new in Southern California, the idea for the market was met with some resistance. A group of merchants, concerned that it would hurt business on Sundays, threatened to take legal action before the market opened in September 1998.

Those business owners now are pretty much resigned to it, though a few complain that parking problems during the market’s 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. hours on Sundays hurt them, according to Ellen Hall, owner of a local pet grooming shop, who represents the merchants.

“It’s been wildly successful,” says Polly Ward, the vice president of the Studio City Residents’ Assn., which promotes the neighborhood event.

And for many people, it has become just that. People constantly stop and chat; neighbors have longer conversations here than over backyard fences at home.

Children ride the little train that runs around the sidewalks and parking lots, they pet the small animals in a mini-zoo and they even ride ponies. Parents wait with steaming coffee, hot tamales, or bags of addictive popcorn made in large steel kettles stirred constantly with wide paddles like a risotto.

“It’s almost a festive atmosphere,” says Ira Siegal, a member of the residents group, eating handfuls of that popcorn. “It’s a nice place to spend a few hours.”

Vendors remember customers, tell them honestly if the tomatoes were sweeter last week, and whether this is the best week for lilies. When it rains, the potato salesman drops his prices for the finger-shaped and Yukon Gold spuds.

“There are many good, very nice people coming here,” says Elsie Beneagas, smiling as her customers admire the mostly red, pale orange and pink roses at her busy stall.

Across the way, Julie Franken of Sherman Oaks picks up some strawberries and gushes over the fruits of the market. “It’s my favorite outing,” she says. “It feels real neighborhood. You run into people you know.”

Her daughter, Abby, is a substitute teacher at Carpenter Avenue Elementary up the street. She gets a kick out of seeing her students eating apple slices and other samples every Sunday at the marketplace.

“I love this place,” she says, cradling a bunch of flowers.

Nearby, Barry Mallin, a North Hollywood accountant, buys Asian greens and apples.

“Hello, friend,” the vegetable vendor calls out to Mallin, clearly recognizing him.

“I don’t like going to supermarkets,” Mallin says. “I like the fresh produce here.”

But it’s not all hydroponic lettuce, French tulips and heirloom tomatoes. Tables of sparkling, beaded bracelets and necklaces have sprung up lately, and the pistachio seller has become a fixture.

Then there’s the man who sells fish from a refrigerated truck and a woman selling bright green bamboo. The honey man sells by the jar and even the strawful, and the ladybugs are plentiful by the pint to rid gardens of devastating pests.

The organic cookies and cakes are selling like, well, hot cakes. But the one thing that is still puzzling: sugar-free, fat-free, yeast-free . . . bread? That’s what the sign says, anyway.