When his favorite breakfast spot at the Original Farmers Market switched from metal to plastic cutlery a few years ago, longtime regular David Freeman didn't.
Instead, the Los Angeles writer brought a spoon from home. Once he finishes his morning coffee, he returns the spoon to the market's tiny Coffee Corner to keep for him until his next visit.
As it turns 75 this week, the market remains a place where the wary can hold change at bay.
"Los Angeles is a very impersonal town. This is the opposite of that," explains Bob Tusquellas, who owns Bob's Coffee and Doughnuts, Tusquellas Seafoods and Tusquellas Fish and Oyster Bar.
Freeman echoes the thought: "I didn't realize I would someday value the simple act of knowing the person who makes my coffee."
At its beginning, a few farmers hawked produce from their trucks. Today, the market has grown into a collection of several dozen shops and restaurants at the corner of 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue. Parking can be maddening. The rickety wood-and-metal chairs are not so comfortable, though plenty of people occupy them for hours at a time, day after day. Some of the shops are remarkably anachronistic, especially compared with the thoroughly modern Grove shopping center next door. Farmers Market merchants have operated for decades on month-to-month leases; some stalls post "cash only" signs.
An estimated 3 million people visit each year, drawn to a place that straddles stodgy and funky, hokey and hip.
Early mornings belong to the East Patio.
At 6 a.m., three hours before the Original Farmers Market officially opens (though Du-par's restaurant is open round the clock), the day has begun at Bob's, where a baker rolls out loaf-sized pillows of dough and cuts out dozens of circles, deftly popping out the hole before placing them on a rack to proof and then fry for raised, glazed -- the top seller.
Soon, Phil's Deli & Grill comes alive, with five workers behind the counter and six people ordering breakfast, including some in red T-shirts that pledge their love for Drew Carey - a ploy to get on the "Price Is Right" next door at CBS.
By 9, the tables fill up. At one sits a trio of women who started dropping by as young mothers, after dropping children off at nearby Hancock Park Elementary School.
"We used to discuss kids and then teens and now it's parents and grandchildren," says one of them, Katie Ragsdale.
