| Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington is an absolute jewel along the Elliott Bay waterfront, right in the heart of Seattle's City Center. One of the most popular tourist destinations in Seattle, it's an indoor market open 7 days a week, every day of the year except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. The Market hosts numerous local farmers, fishermen, ranchers, bakers, candymakers, artisan craftspeople, restaurants, and local independent merchants selling everything from comic books to antiques to local wines. It also promotes community, and makes it much easier for people in the area to support their local growers and producers year-round.
Indoor public markets were once numerous throughout 19th and early 20th century America; but as we began to flee our towns and cities and settle in the suburbs, private supermarkets eventually replaced many of these places, contributing to the destruction of local food systems in the process. More than a few Public Markets still remain though, and they can serve as an example of one great way to begin to improve our local food systems.
Jump with me - and let's talk about some examples in San Francisco, Salem (OR) and Philadelphia... |
| I love outdoor farmers markets, and it's really great to see the substantial rise in the number of same all throughout our country of late...but a major shortcoming of virtually all of them is that they usually operate at best weekly, and for only a few months out of the year. This is especially the case here in the Northern latitudes, and even here in Portland and other places that can still produce an abundance of local foods in the winter months - one of our two year-round outdoors farmers markets is weekly on a Tuesday afternoon, and the other operates only twice a month on Sundays. We can do much better than that, and we're going to have to if we want to be sure that we can continue to feed ourselves in the future.
Portland
Like many other cities, Portland once had a few indoor public markets. There are currently plans for a new one, but the project seems to still be stuck right where it was years ago. One major problem is finding a suitable home, and I've been strongly in favor of the past proposals to site it at Union Station, a major Amtrak station served daily by multiple regional trains between Seattle and Eugene, Oregon; and daily long-distance routes to Los Angeles and Chicago. Locally, the station is also accessible via multiple TriMet bus lines and is only 3 blocks from the Portland Streetcar, and beginning next year it will additionally be served by the new MAX Light Rail Green Line, which will also link into the existing 3 MAX Light Rail lines. Unfortunately, it seems that the Union Station plan is dead, and more recent plans to instead purchase a historical former Federal Building directly across the street from Union Station have also fallen through. It's only a matter of time before a year-round indoor public market returns to Portland, but let's hope that it's much sooner rather than later.
Salem, Oregon
About 50 miles south of us in our State Capitol of Salem, is the longest continuous running farmers market in Oregon. Salem Public Market is only open on Saturdays; but it does operate weekly year-round, and is an indoors and heated establishment providing a community gathering place sheltered from the cold, wet and windy Willamette Valley winter weather...and of course provides a place for local growers, producers and craftspeople to sell their products directly to the community during the months when they'd otherwise have to rely on much more inconvenient, indirect and less profitable methods of distribution. And of course, the infrastructure there is already in place to expand operations whenever necessary or desired.
San Francisco
Much like down in beautiful San Francisco, with the Ferry Building Marketplace, which also hosts the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market (where I purchased the most amazing bag of smoked almonds ever last August when I very (!) briefly lived right across the Bay in Oakland...). The Ferry Building Marketplace is open daily, and while it definitely tends more towards upper-income types, again the fact is that the infrastructure is there to adjust accordingly should the need arise. The building is right on Muni, and is regionally accessible via BART, being only two blocks from the Embarcadero subway station.
Philadelphia
Back East in my favorite city, right in Center City Philadelphia on SEPTA's Market-Frankford Blue Line lies one of my favorite places in the world. The Reading Terminal Market is like stepping back into time, right down to the breathtaking building itself which was once a passenger terminal of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. The hustle and bustle of an historic indoors market in one of America's oldest cities - 7 days a week throughout the year, local vendors carry produce, free range poultry, meats, seafood, pastured eggs, Amish baked goods, dairy products, prepared ethnic and regional foods, artisan crafts and jewelry, restaurants, etc... And of course an old guilty pleasure of mine - Down Home Diner.
All with classic Philadelphia (pronounced 'Fuh-lelf-eeya'...) soul and attitude...
Moving Forward From Here
There are of course dozens of these places I've missed (tell us about your favorites in the comments!), and of course I haven't even gotten into any outside of America. There are public marketplaces around the world that have been operating longer than the United States has been a country - and a series I plan to begin here soon is to take a journey to these other places one by one and maybe try to see if we can learn a thing or two from these other places that have managed to maintain strong ties to their historical food cultures and systems for centuries, while we here in America seem to go through a different Food Fad every 6 months or so.
I'd say a system of permanent indoors public markets would go a long way towards strengthening our local food systems, and would be an excellent project to focus on in terms of public spending priorities; on the federal, state and municipal levels. Think of them as the physical infrastructure of local and regional food systems. |
