Lovin’ That Down-Home Feeling

About the Farmers Market, a selfish request:

Please don’t mess it up.

Yes, I know we’ve been told it’s only going to get better. But I go there because it’s the furthest thing from a mall, and now they’re building one next door.

Sure, we’ve been promised that the flavor and charm of the L.A. institution at 3rd and Fairfax, begun in 1934 when farmers sold produce off the back of their trucks, won’t change.

But can we believe it?

I’m standing at the northwest corner of the property, outside the new Johnny Rockets, wondering if we’ve been duped. How could they put Johnny Rockets, a chain with a faux ‘50s theme, at the same end of the market as Du-par’s, the real thing?

Why wasn’t someone arrested?

Every morning, Paula Leung of the Market Grill, a little deli at the northeast end of the market, strolls past a dozen stalls to go buy her ground beef at Marconda’s. Louie DeRosa, who wears a black tie and white apron at the butcher shop his grandfather started 50 years ago, hands Paula a package of meat and she goes and makes the best 1/3-pound hamburger in Los Angeles. Not some frozen, reheated hockey puck. The real thing. Fat, juicy, grilled to perfection.

But guess what.

Paula Leung’s business is down since Johnny Rockets opened. Her burger couldn’t be fresher if she kept a cow behind the counter, but an assembly-line patty threatens her livelihood.

“My customers still say it’s the No. 1 burger,” Leung says with pride. Maybe, she adds hopefully, business is slow because of the parking problem during construction. But the new chain can’t be helping, she says.

The beast just won’t let up. It tramples originality, erases history, dresses us in the same Banana Republic chinos.

Listen, I like Johnny Rockets burgers. I like them on the Promenade in Santa Monica or in Old Pasadena.

But the Farmers Market is sacred ground. If it had to have another burger joint, why not the Apple Pan, to keep the market local and original?

Once, when I was single and living on another coast, the lovely and talented Alison Shore used to sit under the trees at the east end of the market and write me postcards.

One day over by Moishe’s, where aspiring scriptwriters hide their doubts behind dark shades, and where the air is filled with Russian accents and irresistible temptations from Bobs Coffee and Donuts and Tusquellas Fish and Oyster Bar, she sketched out a word picture. And then she wrote:

“The wind shakes shadows across my table.”

I fell in love.

With her, with the market.

Please don’t mess it up.

Yes, I’m a nostalgic coot. I know that the merchants themselves, Paula Leung included, welcome The Grove, as the new mall will be called when it opens early next year. They say they need the business it will bring.

“Anyone can wax poetic about the market,” says Alfredo Diaz, owner of the Kokomo Cafe, where I love the catfish and eggs for breakfast. “But do we really need four stores selling key chains and souvenirs? Everything has to evolve. I think the market can use some improvements, and they can be made without sacrificing the integrity or charm of the place.”

Maybe so. But I like the key chains. I like the tacky refrigerator magnets. I like the ugly, industrial-green folding chairs with the uncomfortable wooden seats. Does Los Angeles always have to be about embracing the new?

Patricia Miller, a bookkeeper, and Joanne Robbins, a real estate agent, began meeting near Coffee Corner when their children were in kindergarten. They’re still there, playing canasta and shooting the breeze when they can sneak out of work. Their children are now 25.

“We’re boycotting the Starbucks,” says Robbins, who cherishes the very things that have made the market a stubborn holdout in a world of advancing homogenization.

“Yeah,” says Miller. “When the Starbucks came in, Bobs and the Coffee Corner started selling lattes and frappes. They had to, to compete.”

Anne Chernak, one of those people you see every time you go to 3rd and Fairfax, told me not to worry because the market is the people who frequent the place. Even if it changes a little, she says, the people won’t.

On Saturday nights, Chernak is one of the brave souls at the karaoke bar. She steps onto the stage and belts standards like “You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You.” Between songs, she tells jokes.

Tell me a joke now, I say.

“A man brings his church pastor home for dinner, and somebody around the table asks what’s for dinner. And the little boy says, ‘Goat.’

“ ‘We’re having goat?’ asks the pastor.

“ ‘Yes,’ says the boy. ‘I heard Daddy tell Mommy we were having the old goat for dinner tonight.’ ”

Please don’t mess it up.

Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.