Our Extra Hour

Nice to get up and turn the clock back...even though it means our last market on the Park Blocks will be dark at the end when we give our final howl of the season (for those of you who aren't there, we always end the last Market with a primal howl to the Crafters' Moon as we leave downtown for a winter indoors. It's a fun balance to the little song in the morning...)

I feel called to respond to Bob Warren's Weekly viewpoint about the Market's relationship with the City and the Farmers. First, I thank him for caring about us, and for saying that in public, which we as members rarely do. Those of us who try to speak for the group know we can never fully express the thoughts of 600 diverse members, our staff, our Board and all our community supporters. Hardly anything is fully in agreement with this group, except that we love the Market and want it to thrive.

His main point, which was a little hard to pick out, was that the PPS consulants from NY, who were hired to advise the City on downtown solutions, proposed closing the Market for a season and a half and tearing the Park Blocks down to the ground and starting over. It was a terrible shock to us who had been working with the consultants and immediately destroyed the trust that we, as primary stakeholders, would be heard. The City has never directly said that they won't follow that advice.

If you aren't aware, I am the head of the Downtown Developments Task Force for Saturday Market, and as such I have been meticulously tracking our relationships in downtown for the past four years, with plenty of attention given to it before that. You can check back in the archive of this blog for many posts I've written about the subject. I listen to as many of the City Council meetings and workshops as I can, and have been included in lots of meetings with City  and County Staff and others working on these issues. I have a collection of paper a foot high and I have studied both that PPS report and the Park Blocks Master Plan in detail. The city has never directly told us they won't close or move us, though we have directly asked for that assurance.

And it isn't like I started five years ago. In the past I took minutes for the Farmers, and I've had relationships with them for over thirty years. I was there when they separated from Saturday Market about ten years in, and watched as they tried to make it in various locations until they secured the north block across the street from us. I've sold at lots of Tuesday Market configurations, and know for certain that the only way we crafters succeed at TM is when we are right there within the produce booths. Proximity is everything for the markets. The synergy and symbiosis is extremely complex, has a long history, and I would dispute the dog/tail analogy. Sometimes it's one way, sometimes the other. It's not simple, and involves a lot of individuals who don't agree.

One thing that's true is that we at SM are wary of following the farmers down the path they've chosen. We are heading in a different direction, or more correctly, they've struck out on a new road and we are staying on the one we're on. When the Urban Renewal Funds were allocated, the City did pitch a large sum, $11.2 million, to the Park Blocks Remodel, (Edit, I had this way off. $5.2 million was for parks spaces, which included Kesey, Hult Cts and Library Plaza at the time, and $4.7 for farmers was correct, plus their leftover $500,000 which still hadn't been spent) to match the $5.2 million for the Year-Round Indoor Farmers' Market. The money has been sitting there, some of it used in the Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper efforts to activate the Park Blocks and downtown. I would say that almost none of it has yet been used to directly benefit Saturday Market as the renter of the southern blocks, but things have been proposed. Some of it has benefitted us, indirectly, like dislodging the camping that was making the PB unsafe for us, and a general improvement of the downtown, but most of the energy has been spent on the weekdays, because Saturday didn't need fixing. We've told them that. Everybody but the PPS consultants knew what we meant.

We've been sitting in this position for years, of figuring out how to say no without saying no. The first thing was the Feasibility Study for the YRIM, which was initially proposed as a Public Market kind of development which the farmers and the crafters would share, co-managing it, finding ways to make it work together. We participated in the study survey, which showed that it was feasible, but when we realized it would obliterate the Market we built, we said a definite flat NO to further participation in the project. We coulda had a building. We decided we don't want a building. We most definitely do not want to sell indoors. "Public Market" has a history for us.

Our magic is in our once-a-week, outdoors in easily accessible, beautiful public space, with low-cost participation costs, member control, independent funding, and all of the very same tenets set in place by our founders almost fifty years ago. That's who we are, that's who we want to be, and we know we are the experts in how to do this. You can see our success every Saturday. We don't really want what the city has offered.

Goddess knows we don't want a fully remodeled space. Our deep culture is site-based. I've written about our neighborhood relationships and all the ways we've adapted to our space in the 35 years we've been in the southern two blocks. We could not move, even temporarily, to some parking lot with no shade and no services to accomodate construction, without it destroying what we've grown. Our stance is that we can't move, and we can't close, but there are lots of weekdays and a whole period of 41/2 months when we are not renting the Park Blocks. If the City wants to improve the concrete, fix the walls, remove one or two trees (no more!) or propose a way to add a restroom or a new stage within those limitations, we might enjoy that. We might support some things like that. But not all of us. If you take out the fountain and eliminate my space, well, I will have to re-assess my whole operation down there. If you put a bathroom where I have sold for so many years, change where the food booths set up, move the stage to the other block, or ask us to move to City Hall block for a year, we think Saturday Market might fail to thrive. We think we would lose members, find that a lot of people would take a leave of absence at minimum, and our budget would be broken and we'd suffer. So our position is no closing, no moving, and no going indoors year round. We want what we have built. But we are the tenants, not the owners. Yet we are a big part of the owners, which are actually the public, right?

The City has patiently explained that a community solution has to be found for the Park Blocks, and we don't own that, as renters one day a week (for 35 years, though.) Yes, of course, we activate the park and downtown like nobody's business, and the City staff who has tried to emulate us during the week for several years knows just how hard it is to do that successfully. We have the keys to that and they've learned from us. They even subsidize other craft organizations to have booths at their events now. Crafters bring life and quirk and people love them. Farmers do too, and there's a  lot of mutual admiration in that synergy, until it gets framed as competition. We don't compete with the farmers.

So the building and our relationship with the farmers. Sigh. I was fired from taking minutes for them, as it became clear that we (SM) were not going to agree with some things going forward, and I was perceived as an outsider. They did a lot of things that made them different from the LCFM we knew. They began appointing community members as Board members, ended informative communications and a high level of member involvement, for a different business model that they felt served their purposes better. They ended the longstanding "gentlemen's agreement" that we had held with them, that we would not sell produce and they would not have food booths. They added a beer garden, and began adding businesses that were more commercial than we allowed in our Market. Maker is the Seller went by the wayside for them, as they allowed direct agents and employees more than we did. All of the changes were things they wanted for their organization and we couldn't really even object that much. They are a different kind of market with different needs, and that just became more so as we diverged. We had to actually oppose them in some siting proposals, such as closing 8th and Oak so they could use 8th as selling space. We had to show them that would probably not work out to their beneift either.

That was all okay; we had some hard feelings but we mainly operated much the same as usual. Our friends were still our friends, and we tried to keep our disputes mostly out of the public eye. Lots of people still think all the activities on the Park Blocks are "Saturday Market." Then came the UR funds.

The Farmers' management and Board bought into the building idea. They want the YRIM. We said our hard NO but we said it softly, and we chose to not oppose the farmers in meeting their own needs in the way they want to meet them. We've been watching and listening, and though we have our fears about changing the Park Blocks operations, we aren't opposing the building. Some of our members have all along had no objections to it, and nobody knows how it will play out. It could be good for both markets, and it could kill both markets. It is speculation at its most concrete level.

Remodeling the Park Blocks into the Town Square is a huge project with lots of details, and there is where we sit, contemplating the details and wondering about how to proceed. Confidence isn't high. We could use some reassurance. Maybe Bob can get us some.

We do have a 5-year contract on the southern blocks, but things can be done to it within that. We proposed that some on-site storage might be nice, since our staff hauls tons of equipment two  blocks every week, and it's hard. So the City staff thought putting four pods, two for them and two for us, might be good, and they plopped one down, after we took a hard look at the site and tried to find space. Once we saw the first one, we said no to any more. They are huge and ugly, even with a dino wrap. We've adapted to those (two now) and the unusable, low-capacity locked restroom trailer. We've lost two prime loading spaces to those, and a few to the crosswalk, but the crosswalk was necessary and important for safety and kind of works okay. We like the pink flower boxes. The effort was made to make them fun and funky with polkadots and we liked that. We even asked for a similar treatment to the place we put our info booth. Some people even liked the EPD camera in the fire lane for two Saturdays, though I was not one of them. Yes, people who were watching the tapes, I was that old lady who kept looking at the camera with my arms folded. I felt safer without it. But nobody asked me.

We didn't really have a chance to oppose the deck on the west block, and the feedback we gave about design wasn't taken, and frankly, it's kind of a folly. Little used, it is impacted by our porta-potties. We asked to move those across the street so the deck would be better, but couldn't get that. The deck didn't take space we were using, but it impacted quite a few members and mostly we've settled into being okay with the deck and occasionally it works. We will certainly always need more customer seating.

This is getting too long so I'll try to wrap up. Thanks, Bob, for speaking in public, even with the small errors like getting Opening Day wrong (It's ALWAYS the first Saturday in April.) and I hope no one thought we don't get along with the farmers or want a bulding of our own. We want what we have built. We love the way it works now, and we don't want to change anything major. We've tried to be clear, and we actually have developed pretty good relationships with City staff over the past couple of years. We think they've heard us, and we think when the plans start being made, we might be okay with them. But, there's a giant, overwhleming BUT.

The City isn't telling us what they're planning, in specifics. The farmers aren't telling us specifics either. Better communication would be great. If there are drawings, we should have them in my foot-tall pile. What I do have is not acceptable. I have resisted going to the City Council and dumping my pile of research on the table and telling them I need better answers. I don't think they have them.

I have avoided going to the public for support, because I know it is there, and I believe that community solutions will honor our needs and we'll be able to negotiate the ways we will say no without saying no. I believe in our creative intelligence in finding true inclusive solutions and there are certainly some we need, like that fourth block issue, Free Speech Plaza, the outlaw space I support with the fees I pay for services and promotion of my Market. I am always hopeful that we are strong enough to be clear and give credence and evidence to our positions so that all will see that solutions can be found that are elegant, supportive, and successful.

Hope is a thing in short supply, and I appreciate the distraction from the national crisis to get back into our local reality. City Staff will present on Town Square plans at a worksession at 5:30 pm on November 13th (Tuesday because of Veteran's Day.) I will be at that worksession, taking notes.

I will speak at the following Public Forum if I need to, but it has never been my first choice to make this about me and what I think is right. Our decisions at Market are made by seeking consensus. That's just how we operate, and the current language of participatory decision-making and community conversations and so on isn't really as far from consensus process as you might think. The test will come when the City staff decides what they will move forward with when they hear everything the stakeholders have to say. Councilors have said the Park Blocks are forgotten space, are shabby, are unused, and many other things that make me think they have never been to the Market. I know they do sometimes come...I saw one there yesterday sitting on the lawn for a long time.

I thought about making her work by discussing Bob's column, but I decided to just keep doing my Saturday job, making money to pay my bills. Property taxes are due and I don't have the money just yet, though yesterday will help. Still, I spent $15 on grapes. I love the farmers. I'll send her my link.

We'll get through whatever comes. As archivist for the Market, I've read about lots of times when things looked dire, and here we still are to tell the story. We're not going anywhere.

If you would like to join my task force, you can email me at dmcwho@efn.org and I'll send you updates and links to articles and meetings. Not everyone wants to know every little thing about the Park Blocks, but if you do, there's a way to keep track. I can't channel the words of the goddess, but I can let you know what I know, and occasionally what I think. It's essential to me, and why I volunteer to listen to all those lengthy meetings and read all those detailed documents. I care. I know you do, too, and that was Bob's message. People care.

See you next week for our last howl in the gathering dark. Then the shiny Holiday Market! Let's hope for the best on Nov. 13th, after we survive this next Tuesday. You know what to do about that.

Farmers' Feelings

I got the feedback on my dark post that I seemed to be bitter about farmers and I think that is somewhat true and not what I intended. I have a long and complex history with the farmers that goes all the way back to my start at Saturday Market in 1975.

I will likely never be able to tell or even write that history, because some of it is shameful and most of it is speculation and opinion with lots of untellable facts. So while I wish I could, I can't explain my complicated feelings about their organization.

I sell with them at Tuesday Market, and I shop there and at Saturdays every single week. I remember participating in a survey way back that asked how much I spend...it was a shocking amount really. My food purchases are not frugal; that's one area where I seldom look at prices and buy whatever I think I need or want and I try to always eat organic and healthy food with as much effort as I can put into it. So I am deeply grateful for the LCFM and all they bring to me, personally.

As Park Blocks neighbors they are vital to us. Our Market was always based on the availability of healthy food grown and made locally and that won't change. We as a community feel that they are a part of us and we generally wish for their success and prosperity.

That is, whenever it is not at the expense of ours. The history that I won't articulate includes times when our love has been tested, and we have tried hard to hold off judgement and wait and see how things play out, and in most cases things are fine. The beer garden turned out to be no problem as soon as they figured out that a local small producer was better than a local giant, and right now it seems perfect. I have never witnessed a drunk patron causing a problem for our Market and now that artisan alcohols are very popular I can see their wisdom in opening a space for that. They sell all kinds of wines and other alcoholic agricultural products over there and it isn't a problem at all.

That's one idea we were hesitant about and didn't publicly object to, and things went well. There have been lots of those directions that LCFM chose and some had good results and some did not. I objected strongly to the rewriting of history to wipe out the fact that Saturday Market started with the farmers in our midst in 1970 and there is no direct connection from this farmers market to the one started in 1915 and in no sense at all is LCFM 101 years old. But that was just a marketing idea that was badly conceived and very effective and doesn't change the identity of Saturday Market except when people use it to establish us as the little sister to the big brother when it is the other way around. For the record, I still object to rewriting history and will always counter that claim, which they word carefully now but still try to make. Farmers are millenia old but so are artisans so whatever. Always tell the truth.

That big sister role isn't too helpful so we don't brag about it much but it's there in our institutional memory. There are things that happened that were sort of because of that...spreading of wings kind of things and there were times when insulting things were said and done, but it isn't useful to go back and dissect that stuff. What does carry forward is that we remember them and the trust relationship is still strained. The most recent of those were serious and could have been damaging (I'm talking about the 8th St. closure idea) but people held to the higher ground of not getting offended and working together to make things better and organizationally that has always been our position and is today. We want mutual success and cooperation and we want a close relationship.

There are many ways we can help each other and many of those are in place. Tuesday Market is just one successful example when craft booths move in and help the market look full in the transition seasons. LCFM manages their members and SM manages ours. There are issues, but not big ones, and those of us who sell there generally like it. But there are culture clashes between the two organizations, and we usually hold our tongues and defer, or ask our manager to work it out diplomatically when the opportunity arises. A past Board chair and manager realized the essential practice of quarterly meetings between the two and happily that has continued effectively. So we do work together and we can.

So when I say co-managing a space is not possible there are caveats to that. Cooperating is certainly possible and desirable. We could probably explore quite a few areas where expenses could be shared and other things aligned to mutual benefit. The differences in culture are significant though, and are unlikely to change. We've adjusted to the different hours and their choices about HM days and they affect us, but we're still strong enough to succeed within that framework. Their promotions of their market benefit us for the most part, but lately their blurring of our identities is problematic. They've gone from wanting an identity that doesn't include us to one that co-opts us, and I'm not just making that up. Take a look at this video and tell me if you don't see someone holding up photos of my product trying to use it to promote theirs. In what marketing plan is that not unkind at best? We don't operate like that. I'm trying to take the high ground that any publicity is good publicity and remind myself that we show photos of their vegetables in our promotions...but really? They're recruiting our vendors when we are trying to book our own show. This does not appear to be cooperation to me.

But do I call KVAL and bitch? Do I storm over to this guy, whom I see most Tuesdays and complain? Probably not. I write it here in my semi-public soapbox to let a tiny slice of the public decide for themselves. I did mention to him that we viewed their use of "Saturday Farmers Market" as a banner headline for their ads as infringement on our brand...but it's a hard argument to make and I don't argue much. I made my point but I didn't call my lawyer. I feel the same about Holiday Farmers Market, but what can I do? Let's keep going with any publicity is good publicity.

I absolutely love many of the farmers and people I work with on Tuesdays and don't want to ever mess anything up with them. I like that little marginally-lucrative link with them and the public that doesn't find me on Saturdays and I am well aware that I might at any time say the wrong thing and get frozen out. I try not to criticize or bite the hand. I'm cheerful and cooperative and make the best of things. But culturally, time and time again I feel out of my element with them. Go read their handbook and read ours. Even our mission statements are different, and about half of our practices. Lots of our policies are radically different. I support their right to make policies and practices that serve their members and it's none of my business, and I merely observe these things and sometimes reflect on them.

Because you can tell a lot about an organization by the words in the public record. You can research these and it's all there to compare and think about. I trust that the city and county and the people who worked on the CPW study and the PSP placemaking have done that research and made those connections. These are two different animals, these markets that seem so continuous and so much the same. We are decidedly not the same. And that is by design, and has grown from the organizational direction each one has chosen.

And I do not think these should be blurred or combined into a hybrid that serves neither of us. I do not think that it would be a fantastic idea to put us together in any kind of blended space. While that is indeed my opinion it is based on research, experience, and forty years of history. This is now, but it does not cancel out the past. Looking forward, I prefer to stay in reality and not go for attractive concept.

What we have is working now. They need a better space and have asked for it, and if all goes well they will get it. We could use a few infrastructure improvements but nothing needs to change about the Oldest Continuous Weekly Handcrafted Market of its kind. We're pretty proud of that and no one else can claim it. Ever, as long as we keep going.

We also completely love our home in the Park Blocks and while some may dream of space somewhere else like EWEB plaza or wherever, we don't want to move. I can speak confidently for my membership organization on that. We wouldn't mind if the FSP "market" moved, but we don't want the farmers to move either. We sometimes resent how much of our resources go to supporting them with our greater expense for bathrooms, garbage sorting, etc., but their increased outreach for customers and community support hasn't hurt us too much so far. I'd like them to be more sensitive to our needs, but mostly that includes our responsibility to articulate them.

Someone suggested that I could toughen up and start competing like they do and using tactics to match...yeah, but no. When I sat at their Board meetings and took minutes for them, I tried to be a neutral observer and just record, but sometimes I just had to point things out. When they got rid of the percentage and gutted their budget so each one of them could pay less, most particularly the ones who earned a lot, I pointed out a couple of reasons why the percentage was a good thing. It helps you track income, for one, and it fosters ownership. When you are paying a big fee, you care more about how the money is spent and how organizational policies will help you continue to earn on that level. And the flat fee hurts those at the low end and benefits those at the high end. When you pay a small flat fee and pocket more profits, you have less investment in the market. It's another market for you, instead of something you are an integral part of. I personally am always happy to pay a high fee when it is my turn to, and enjoy that I am making it possible for others to build their businesses using our collective fees to help us all prosper. But then I am not making a fraction of what the big booths do at LCFM. And if I call them millionaire farmers, that probably does sound bitter, but I have no wish to be a millionaire and I am not envious in the least. I know how it feels to go from a maker to a manager and it didn't suit me. But everyone gets to set their own life path.

So, bitter? No, I'm not. I'm realistic about who we are on the south side and who they are on the north side. I enjoy them every minute and am always sorry when they close at three, although I kind of enjoy the quiet aftermath that we call "the vendor's hour." I love the farmers (except maybe a couple who don't particularly like me either) and I would say I have a bit of conditional love for LCFM. I certainly appreciate them, and want them close. I do not wish them any lack of success. But I am a bit mindful of their big boots. History still matters. Moving forward into the future is all well and good and we may not be able to escape it, but as I said before, I'm not following them down their road. It's a different branch than the one I'm on. Hopefully we continue to travel in parallel with some nice meeting places along the way.

I do wish I'd been brave enough to go to their dinner a few weeks ago. I'm kind of shy about calling myself one of their community. In addition to getting stronger I could get a bit braver and find a more comfortable place with the farmers. I'll try. Building trust starts over every minute and I'll keep working at it. I hope we all do.

Progress

The meeting went well! If anything, I was over-organized, but I only had an hour and a clear idea of what had to come first...which was galvanized by some late information that morning. That didn't derail anything but was an interesting wrinkle for sure. Seventeen people came and everyone was interested, though I don't expect everyone there wants to be part of a task force. I will ask the Board to appoint me to head one, and maybe can come up with a clever name for it. At the moment it is DTD Task Force, which stands for DownTown Developments. Rabble Rousers wasn't really a good fit for the activity we are doing, but it was tempting. The energy was exciting.

I was glad that I had reviewed the Park Blocks Master Plan the night before, which was adopted ten years ago in 2006. It is still a very good plan for the space. We didn't get to discussing our preferences for the Park Blocks upgrade, but that will be the next thing on our agenda.

We mostly wanted to reground in our values, and craft a response to the UO group doing the feasibility study for what they are now calling "Public Market," which began with the LCFM request for site improvements. That request is old, really old, and it does appear in the PBMP. Pretty much everyone is in agreement that the farmers could use a better space. The study has a lot of elements and I won't go into detail, but the $4.5 million allocated will most likely not build any of the proposed concepts. Even if it did, the only plan so far for maintenance and business costs of a building is from user fees. Which would at least double the fees the users are already paying for the costs of their organizations.

We know as an organization that low-cost business incubating is essential to our mission, so there is no way we can move into a place with fees that will be double or more than what we are paying. We also know we are committed to our outdoor event, and to the rest of our values as seen in this little poster I made, so it is pretty clear that the concepts don't match our reality. Whether they match the reality of the farmers is a different question that they have to answer.

The group, or rather my other poster, clarified that we have a large list of differences with the farmers' market even though we started out together. Most of them are significant operations and structural disparities so any type of co-selling arrangement would involve big changes for one of us...and we don't want to change anything about how we are running our organization. Just as the farmers have made these changes to fit their needs and keep them viable according to their ideas of what farmers' markets need, we know what craft markets need and what we don't. Tuesday Market works okay when there are only a small number of crafters who want to participate, and the differences matter there. We've made it work. No one knows how Tuesday Market will fit into the plan, but I've pretty much resigned myself to an end to my participation in it at some point. Guess we'll see about the small details once the bigger ones are worked out.

Co-selling works when it is co-location; everyone agrees on that. Virtually all of our collective members on both sides of 8th St. agree that we want to stay together and like where we are. The vision I see for the Butterfly, which is the Plan A location for farmers' site improvements, is not really any of the concepts presented in the feasibility study. I see City Hall with a very nice plaza that could have some semi-covered or flexibly covered space for the farmers and any events the City wanted to hold there, and in and around the City Hall could be lots of bathrooms, some secure bike parking, some subsidized office space perhaps, and maybe a meeting room we could use for free when we have the bigger meetings that we frequently have. We like our office, and we like being independent, but only about 20 people can fit in our meeting room and that is crowded. We have 600 members who could potentially want to gather. The times we have done so, we've done it on the Park Blocks outside, or inside the Fairgrounds at Holiday Market.

This doesn't even list them all

We dream of an alternate location for Holiday Market, and so do the farmers, but that seems out of reach. We need a big space, and the two organizations together need two spaces. So that's a tough one, but it needs to be discussed. 

In fact, the main problem with the whole plan is how it plays out in the area of competition. If the new site involves expensive structures that need income, the temptation might be to put in some commercial stores of some kind, or food trucks, or other outside businesses. In fact the feasibility study includes up to six "anchor businesses." Add that to the language of "Public Market" and history rears its head. Ask me if you don't know the history of that other public market over on 5th St. There used to be craftspeople there and now it is fully commercial. If indeed we are the best thing going in downtown Eugene as we've been told (by people from NYC even!) the City and County should be rather concerned about putting unfair competition right next to us (cough cough free speech plaza no we don't want to talk about that).

A Food Truck Hub or import shops or tote bag stores or whatever would not help our Market thrive. And somewhere we will also make the statement that closing streets is bad for business, in case that is in the back of anyone's mind. We still have our lists of all the reasons why we don't want the streets around us to be closed to traffic, even though consultants and placemakers love to close streets and fill them with people. We need access, because all of our people have to carry things, heavy things, and they use cars to do that. Farmers Market shoppers need access too, and parking has to be available for them. None of the concepts in the study mentioned parking except to say it would have to be available off site. Somewhere.

We at Saturday Market are lucky to have almost fifty years of institutional memory. We still have people who were there at the beginning, not the least of whom is Lotte Streisinger, who developed the original idea and who comes to shop every week. We use her written history on our website and I used it for the poster. Ours is a living history. We know how old we are (47th season) and we know how old the LCFM is (about ten years younger) and we like to be honest. I should have put that on the poster. We are what you see, and we are happy with who we are. We're not in the market for change or to make more money, except in the usual way of getting better and solidifying our great qualities as we grow older. We wish the farmers well in their project for site improvement, but we have drawn a few lines in the proverbial sand.

I should be typing up the notes from the meeting instead of this and I guess that is next today but I thought people deserved a report. The meeting was a big deal for me and really intense, packed with effort, but now it seems like a normal activity and it seems I have added a big volunteer piece to my plate of those, which was not exactly what I had planned for this time of year. I was supposed to go get some plywood and fix the west side of my shop. I hope I will still do that, but I felt called to reground our membership. I feel good about it. It's something we should do more often, really, just get together and remind ourselves how we are when we are doing our best. We're damn fine.

And Saturday rolls around once a week and is coming soon! I love it. Looking around at the people in the room who have all been there to work with me in the past, I was energized and grateful for how well we can work together. It's not a simple thing, this participatory seeking of consensus and a way forward. It's actually quite fun when it goes well and super valuable as a life skill when you consider how different many of us are from each other and in our lives. I'm looking forward to the next meeting.

I can hardly wait to load up again and trundle downtown. I do hope they get 12th St finished up though. They went right down to the bed on the streets they're replacing and on Tuesday I had to go several blocks outside my route. It will be nice when it is all smooth and solid again.

Sure, that's a metaphor. Brings up some other thoughts about some other issues. Maybe I am not out of things to write about after all, as I had been thinking. There's always something.

How to Change: Don't Put up Roadblocks

Institutional memory is a precious resource but it can sure get ponderous. Sitting in the same spot at Eight and Oak for 43 years has created some powerful stories.

And when I say Eighth and Oak, I am guessing you think: Saturday Market. You think that, for one reason, because in the last 40-odd years Saturday Market has spent just about a million dollars advertising that one essential phrase: 8th and Oak. It's our home, and notwithstanding that it is a city/county park used by thousands of other members of the public, it is still unalterably a home to me, and Saturday Market history there is my history. And there are dozens and hundreds of members and former members who feel that way. We go there every week and do what we do. Thousands of times, each one different.

I asked some tourists this week about their experience, since I had overheard them saying: "There it is, just like on the website." They had seen one of my fresh new hats, *Grateful Dad* pictured in the new products which Kim, our Promotions manager, documents so frequently. They said they didn't know their way around Eugene at all, but just went for Eighth. Eighth, Eighth, Eighth.

This Great Street, historically the Main Street which got the pioneers from Skinner's Mudhole to their farms and communities up the river road, was a conduit long before Sixth and Seventh became the feeder streets. Long before Eleventh was paved, long before any thoughts of bus-rapid-transit, back when people walked everywhere unless they had a horse. Farmers and craftspeople gathered there from the beginning to trade and support each other.

It is the artery of our Market, and as it runs between our two Markets, Saturday Market and Lane County Farmers Market, it connects us and feeds us and makes us inseparable.We have more than just synergy. Our institutional memory reaches back to when we were ten and created the LCFM by inviting farmers into our membership. Lotte told us all of the world markets she had observed had produce and other food within them, and we needed it too. Throughout the next thirty years we sold together with farmers in various arrangements, and it was always together that we all did our best.

We can't really cut to now and just start fresh with new solutions to what some LCFM members and some members of the community think are the essential problems with the space. We would not be wise to jettison our collective memory and follow the imaginations of new people who don't seem to see us as we see ourselves. We couldn't do it even if we tried.

The Saturday Market is not just an organization, but it is a membership, and every member is an independent, autonomous business. Each one thinks for herself, gathers facts, forms opinions, and makes her (or his) experience, different every week, responding to the conditions of the moment, but within the conditions of our collective experience that we have learned are what sustains us. This Saturday every time I walked anywhere in the Market I heard people talking about the street closure plan. We like having farmers, but this week we were having a hard time shopping over there.

We like having tourists, parking, garbage collection, hand-washing stations, staff, security, etc. We have chosen to spend a million dollars in advertising and promotion, dollar by dollar. And every single dollar we spend comes from the pockets of our members. All of our money comes from us, through the generosity and interest of our beloved customers, for whom we try our best to create a safe, fun experience.

We create it, with the kind assistance of our neighbors and friends and all of the people who visit our town and want what we want. The love shown for our two organizations is prodigious. People are as dedicated to us as we are to them.

And nobody wants to see us struggle. While members of the community have varied opinions on what will or won't work or should or shouldn't happen, our institutional memory knows that it is possible to break what we have. It is possible to ruin it. As strong and mighty as it looks, you can love it to death.

I'm happy that new farmers are wanting to join what is the premier community gathering in the state, perhaps, maybe in the PNW. Maybe we are the center of the universe as we often say metaphorically. The future of our food is beyond essential, and it seems so vital that young farmers have a way to enter the marketplace, some room, some support. No one is against this. But I am going to draw a very clear line on how growth has to happen at Eighth and Oak.

Eighth has to be open. It is our artery. The closure of Eighth Street for a few farmers' booths is not a step forward to greater prosperity. It will break our Market. No rosy vision of expansion that chokes off our lifeblood will be sustainable or positive for either organization.

It might look good for the farmers. An Eighth Avenue closure plan brings nothing for the Saturday Market members. It will break us.

It may be rude and it is not our style to point this out, but we have a huge imbalance on the Park Blocks, and that is that Saturday Market has grown organizationally to respond to the changed conditions of our marketplace. We have pooled our money through our percentage fee (we pay $10 plus 10% daily for our spaces, plus other fees) and we have rented lots of bathrooms (at an annual cost of $12,000). We have hired security teams for the hours we are there. We have hired people to put up fences, tables, rain protection and shade, to empty our trash cans, to clean up messes, to process people's credit cards and hand out change, to give little kids bandaids and to spread the word of our offerings. We have spent a literal fortune to build our enterprises together and to make them strong, and above all, safe, and we always work until we find something that works for as many of us as possible.

We have subsidized the LCFM with our money, our time, our thoughts, and our hearts for the whole of its existence. We have nurtured it and we continue to pay way more than our fair share for what happens around us on Saturdays. Thousands of my dollars have gone to clean up after the spontaneity of what happens on the Courthouse Plaza. Our staff cleans it every week. We don't rent it, we aren't responsible for it, we don't have any control over it, we just keep it clean. We do that because it is the right thing to do. Thousands of my dollars have gone to sort the trash of farmers' customers, to answer the bazillion questions about the farmers that run through the SM information booth, to do the right thing as well as we know how to do for our beloved neighborhood. We give and we give.

I would not take back a single dollar. I do not like to see the farmers struggle. I would love to see them have the amount of space they need to prosper. However, the space is finite, and we are already using all of it. The uses being made of Eighth Street are the historical, practical, essential uses. It is the only legal and safe bike egress to the west, particularly when Broadway gets blocked off as it was this weekend. It is the way people find the Market, get through it to park, and see what it is. One one side we have the Saturday Market, and on the other side we have the Farmers Market. This is not by accident, and it is not a casual arrangement. Oak Street lacks the intimacy and presence of Eighth. Eighth is not just a through street, it's much more.

We only moved to the Park Blocks in 1982, but we know what it was like when we didn't have the easy entry of Eighth Street. When we were cloistered up on the Butterfly, people were afraid to enter. It took a commitment. Easy entry works for us. Barriers to entry do not.

Closing the Street means narrowing access, and diverting traffic to other locations. Tourists will drive off to Fifth Street, to Down to Earth, to Oakway, and to South Eugene. Locals will find other ways to meet their Saturday needs, deciding not to fight the bolloxed traffic patterns, to take an easier path. It will break us.

And like the other things that we hold in our long memory that have not worked for us, this one will be the worst. This will be looked upon in retrospect just like what happened to downtown through urban renewal, the growth of VRC, and the Downtown Mall. The collective wisdom of the mature institution that is the Saturday Market tells us that this is not the time to accommodate, to experiment, to try out closure and see how it works.

Logistical problems may be solvable, traffic may be controllable, feelings may be consolable. It might look like it works okay for a weekend or part of a season. I'm not sure if you will be able to tell if it is working or not. I'm not sure if the anticipated drop in my  sales and our organization's income, (and the rise in our expenses, which has already taken place as we spend needed resources in meetings and staff time) will be traceable to this alteration in our circulatory system. Nobody really knows.

But we know what feeds us. We know ourselves, and we know the farmers. We know the history of the last ten years of LCFM struggle. We are not new to the situation. We aren't going to put the history aside and doom ourselves to a huge, uninformed mistake by a few people with energy.

Saturday Market is drawing the line. We oppose street closure. LCFM can not own Eighth Street. It is far too valuable.

And through our commitment to doing the right thing, we will continue to work to solve our neighborhood problems. We welcome group process. We have skills to apply to it. We care deeply about our relationships and long, deep cooperative collaborations with the farmers. We think it will break them too, this vision that is not grounded in what is already happening down there.

We are not willing to stand aside and watch this happen. We have offered at least six alternatives to street closure. There are ideas we haven't even yet explored. We have good ideas, a dime a dozen. Just ask.

Don't ask, at your peril. We have six hundred members with opinions. Some of them are grounded in the long history, and it won't be pretty when they surface. Do the work, Eugene City Government, Lane County Government, Lane County Farmers Market, and all who are trying to support small business, economic prosperity, and sustainable business in Oregon. Find the solution that will actually work to improve things.

Don't break us. We are a treasure. Listen to us and respect us. There is no other Saturday Market. Don't love progress more than you love what we have made, what we are making. Do not try to brush us aside.
We are the experts on downtown retail on Saturdays. We sing it every week: Prosperity and fun for everyone.

Can we just get back to that, please? This is the busy season! I have so much to do, to get ready for OCF, for my only son's wedding, my family reunion, my continuing recovery from my broken foot, researching and writing my book, doing the myriad unpaid and paid things I do all the time. The garden needs weeding! I do not have time to go over this repeatedly as we have for the last several years. Do not close the street. Do not close the street. Just don't do it.