Farmers' Market Downtown Moves For Occupy LA

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The first thing you notice is that the market isn't where it used to be. There are tents where the booths were. The market has, after several one-time-only locations, been moved to the other side of Main Street. Vegetable vendors and bakers are lined up along the sidewalk. A candied apple vendor and other food stalls are up the stairs, ranged along the walls of a pleasant courtyard. A couple of dozen office workers eating their lunches perch on the steps of the fountain or sit at metal cafe tables strewn about. They crane their necks to eye the four or five helicopters hovering overhead. The helicopters are there almost every day, filming the Occupy LA encampment.

Esteban, manning the counter for Senor Corn, says there are fewer customers lately. He chuckled, "Some people might either be lazy, or because of the protesters -- but, yeah, we're missing a lot of city personnel -- they're not coming out as often to buy as before."
You might think the protesters would be buying food from the handily-located farmers' market, but Esteban said business was down about 50 per cent.

Jimmy Cha drove in from Fresno to sell his delicious-looking greens and vegetables at Yang's Best Produce. He says his business is down, too, because of confusion over just where the market had moved to: "It's a different area, and they moved us around, like, three or four spaces, so the regulars don't know where we're at."

The merchants have been told they probably won't be able to get their original spots behind City Hall back for a while. The Los Angeles Police Department is drawing up plans for a timeline for removal of the protest encampment. The exact date isn't yet known, but probably won't be for a few months at best. After that, Cha said, the farmers' market still wouldn't be able to move back in until until the grass grows back, which will take another couple of months.