A community, not just a market, is hurt

Evan Kleiman was in her car when she heard about Wednesday afternoon’s tragedy at the Santa Monica Farmers Market on her radio. “It was as if it happened to family members, which I think is a testament to what the farmers market does.

“It is much more than a place to buy extraordinary food. It’s one of those rare places in the urban community where we can make connections with people and get to know them over one of the most fun things in life, which is good food,” said Kleiman, owner and chef at Melrose Avenue’s Angeli Caffe and host of KCRW’s weekly “Good Food” radio show, which features a regular report from the market.

The importance of the Santa Monica Wednesday market, founded in 1981 and one of the first modern farmers markets, can’t be measured by its age, size or quality. Or even the number of star chefs who can be spotted walking its streets seeking the perfect organic squash and most fragrant white peaches.

To Southern California’s most passionate eaters, the Santa Monica Wednesday market represents the dream of what food shopping should be, in the same way that the Empire State Building stands for every Manhattan skyscraper.

And so after a speeding automobile tore down the length of the Arizona Avenue market just before closing, the reaction was personal and intense, whether someone had actually been at the scene or not -- even if they hadn’t been to the market in months.

“There’s a culture of people who shop at the market; everyone will know someone who was hurt or killed. I think everybody will know somebody affected by this,” said Westwood freelance writer Andy Lieberman, who was stuck in line at the nearby Wells Fargo bank when the accident happened.

So quickly did the news spread among the community that Spago pastry chef Sherry Yard, who was finishing her lunch shift, almost immediately began receiving calls on her cell phone from concerned friends. Her attachment to the market is well-known, so they naturally were concerned that she had been there.

“People keep calling because they know I go there all the time, so everyone is just freaking out,” she said. “It’s like my church. I go there every week. They’re like family to me.”

Yard had finished her shopping and gone to work before the crash.

Late Wednesday night, as market manager Laura Avery stood on Arizona talking with a reporter on her cell phone, friends, farmers and customers repeatedly interrupted, offering good wishes and seeking information about who might have been hurt.

“One of the things that’s so amazing about today, as horrible as it was, is that so many people did so much for other people,” she said. “It was really moving. People were so compassionate and so caring. I was so moved.”

Because the police wouldn’t allow vendors, many of whom drive in from as far away as Modesto, to move their trucks, a spontaneous system of “farmer hostels” popped up. “People just opened up their houses,” Avery said. “All evening we had farmers being invited by customers to come stay the night. Chris the worm lady [Chris Wilson of Playa del Rey’s Simply Worms] invited six people over to stay at her house.”

Word spread quickly, especially in online communities. The first post about the accident on Chowhound, an online message board devoted to restaurants and eating, appeared a little more than an hour after it happened. Expressions of compassion quickly piled up.

“Just want to offer snaps to all the Chowhounds who thought first thing of how they could help any injured or suffering families,” wrote one person. “It sort of puts to bed any images being perpetuated that Americans are self-centered consumers who gaze at our navels. Let’s hope none of our members or any favorite vendors were killed or seriously injured. Also, let’s say a prayer for that old man who seems dazed and probably hasn’t yet realized what chaos he has wrought with his car.”

No farmers were killed, but there had been a strong rumor at one point in the evening that someone working at the Harry’s Berries stand had been hurt. Well-known among marketgoers for its strawberries and green beans, the Oxnard farm is a cooperative venture between the intertwined Iwamoto and Gean families.

In fact, two people had been killed in front of the stand, but no family members had been hurt. Still, friends and customers were constantly calling Jamie Gean Niswander’s cell phone.

“When you see our tarp and our stand and all of that in front of it on TV, everyone was very frightened,” she said.

Josiah Citrin, chef at Melisse, a Santa Monica restaurant five blocks from the market, shops there every week, not only on Wednesday but on Saturday morning as well. And he takes his 3-year-old daughter, Olivia, who rides on her dad’s produce handcart, often with a face liberally smeared with strawberries. She is the third generation of Citrins to go to the market; Josiah first went with his mother when he was a teenager.

“It’s a horrible thing,” he said. “I know all the farmers by name.”

Last year, Citrin held a special dinner at his restaurant, featuring fruits and vegetables grown by some of his market favorites. He invited the farmers to eat and also to talk to the crowd about what they do.

One of the market’s most popular farmers is Coastal Organic’s Maryann Carpenter, from Oxnard. So sought-after are her tomatoes and squash that she was sold out by 12:45 p.m., so she left early, before the crash. Nevertheless, Carpenter said she spent most of Wednesday answering phone calls from family, friends and customers checking to see whether she was OK.

“It’s a unique market,” said Carpenter, who often sells her produce with her husband and two adult children. “Everything under the sun is out there. It’s a real sense of community. We have customers coming for years, like young moms whose children we’ve seen grow up. You make friends and business associates.

“It’s going to be tough going back,” she said. “I’m grateful we weren’t affected. It was a freak accident.”

That such a thing should happen at such a place seems unusually cruel. “I’m so completely saddened,” Kleiman said. “Everyone who was shopping today was doing something so joyful and so positive, taking time out of their insane L.A. schedules to walk down a beautiful street, to interact with people who grow food, to have beautiful tastes and to share hellos. The fact that these people were mowed down this way is tragic.”

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Times staff writers Jennifer Oldham, Geoffrey Mohan and Megan Garvey contributed to this article.