On a Friday afternoon in late October at the Echo Park Farmers Market, activity among multiple vendors in the sparsely populated parking lot just off of Sunset Boulevard is feeling a bit slow. Fall is usually slow, several vendors said, but lately it’s felt almost like each season is slower than the last. “I wish more people were coming,” vendor William Choi said from behind a table of persimmons, apples and grapes.
Choi is a seller for Ventura County-based Cuyama Orchards and has been appearing at the Echo Park Farmers Market for roughly three years. Markets he attends in Orange County and Riverside also feel slower, he said. Choi and other Echo Park vendors this fall are confronting the potential shuttering of this farmers market, one of two possible market closures in the city along with the Crenshaw Farmers Market.
This possibility has sparked a last-ditch fundraising effort by the nonprofit group that runs the markets to save their presence in areas where some residents are food-insecure. Should Echo Park close, Choi said, he would hate to start from square one elsewhere. “It’s going to [cause] damage, because I built up here with customer relationships,” he says.
“I love this market. If for some reason they close this one, I [will] miss it.” Farmers markets, their tables gleaming with ripe stone fruit, glossy gourds or ears of corn, have been sprouting up around Southern California for decades.
While certain markets such as Santa Monica and Hollywood are.