Capitol Hill Farmers' Market
Key Park lot at 1620 Broadway Ave
Tuesdays 4-7:30 pm.

I am a sucker for a market. At least one day of any given vacation will be devoted to ogling a food market: the fish market in Zanzibar, the mercado in Oaxaca, and La Boqueria in Barcelona. But back home Seattle, real farmers' markets, where you can buy directly from the grower, shouldn't be exotic--there's too much good food being grown in this state. Until recently, when I've been struck with a hankering for a peach grown somewhere in this hemisphere or a glossy, speckled head of lettuce as big as a cheerleader's pom-pom, I've had to get in the car and drive to the farmers' markets in the U-District or Columbia City. Luckily, there's now a farmers' market within walking distance.

I stopped by the new Capitol Hill Farmers' Market last Tuesday, and asked rancher Beth Kearney how things were going. "It's fun, it's different from Whidbey Island. We had the SWAT team out today. Apparently a bank robber had a gun and jumped on a bus right where that news van is..." she said as she pointed across the street toward Seattle Central Community College. Kearney is one of about 20 vendors who have signed on to the market, which started on September 21. And while Capitol Hill did its best to provide a little big-city drama for the farmers, Kearney gave neighborhood shoppers a rare chance to get their hands on island-raised, grass-fed (no mad cow disease here!), never-seen-a-feedlot beef.

Meanwhile, her neighboring vendors offered their own seductions. There were Washington State goat cheeses, some aged to cratered perfection, some young and tart, at Les Fromages d'Anne Marie. Chubby carrots, gaudy squash, and gently curling green beans were piled up high at Oxbow Organic Farm's stand, while icy net bags of clams and mussels hid in Taylor Shellfish Farm's coolers. A fair number of SCCC students blew off the market, but it was full of shoppers of greater diversity than you'll ever see pushing past the tourists at the Pike Place Market.

John Hegeman, the former advertising executive who's made a career of spawning street markets, is responsible for the new market. Fourteen years ago, he started the Fremont Market, and later spun it off into the Ballard Farmers' Market. "Farmers' markets have tremendous positive impact on communities; taking the anonymity of the big city and condensing it down to something simple and manageable that happens on a regular basis." On the flip side, he said the middleman-free marketing gives small farmers "an almost viable lifestyle." The market's future schedule and location is a little unclear: it might close up shop before the end of October. "If that's the case," says Hegeman, "word percolates out and we'll be ready for [next] summer." The market might also stay open year round, drawing, as the Ballard market does, on nonseasonal vendors.

Come next spring, Capitol Hill should end up with dueling farmers' markets. The Neighborhood Farmer's Market Alliance is set to open a Sunday market. NFMA, a nonprofit that operates five Seattle farmers' markets, was actually close to launching a market behind the Broadway Market this spring, says director Chris Curtis. "We had 80 farmers signed up for the market." But objections from some residents, the fire department, and QFC over closing the street to traffic stopped the market in its tracks. Curtis said that the news of Hegeman's market down the street came "out of the blue" but she was optimistic about the trend. "I think Capitol Hill can easily support two markets on different days of the week."

As honey man Phillip Lacariere told me about his bees, a scruffy looking guy shuffled up from the park and swiped Phil's lighter. "Is that my lighter?" said Phil as he quickly chased the guy down and returned with his Bic. "I'm from L.A. --I know about riffraff," he said with the bravado of someone who works with thousands of stinging insects.