Georgetown Carnival

"It's like a carnival," a farmer friend excitedly told me last weekend about the brand new Georgetown Market. (I wasn't able to be there personally on opening day because I was at the Bastyr Herb and Food Fair.)

I found it ironic that she described the event's vibrant atmosphere using exactly the same word that some farmers' market managers use disparagingly to describe events that don't focus sufficiently on farmers.

The Georgetown Market feels a lot like Fremont 1995, before the event split and the farmers' moved west to Ballard. There are crafts and flea market stuff as well as farmers and prepared food. There's even a guy selling Vermont maple syrup, which seems to defy the local focus, except that he divides his time between Washington and Vermont and actually does make the syrup himself. He's in the craft section rather than the farmer section, which is an interesting way of integrating this unusual compromise.

Rebekah Denn wrote an interesting piece in this month's Seattle Magazine exploring the question of whether Seattle has too many farmers' markets. Reading it, I was struck by the thought that I've always regarded farmers' markets as an ancient phenomenon in the sense of people gathering in public spaces for commerce, but they're actually quite modern in the sense of providing a venue with a strict focus on farmers, as a way to foster local, small scale agriculture. If that really is the point of a farmers' market, then perhaps these "carnivals" are getting in the way and creating debilitating competition.

On the other hand, farmers' markets are many things to many people. They're public gathering places as well as places where local economies can thrive. Food happens to be the ideal product for this type of event because local food is the freshest food, so locally food producers can offer great value on the best food around. But a great market has to give customers more than just food as an excuse to come down week after week. Even the farmers-only markets recognize this when they offer live music and chef demos.

The Georgetown market has room for 100 vendors, There are about 50 vendors there now, so there is considerable room for growth. It's got a unique setting, with railroad cars and a defunct brick brewery as a backdrop. Last week was crazy busy. This week was considerably less busy, but that's not unusual at a new market that holds a big opening. I'm looking forward to watching it evolve.