The Alemany Farmer's Market

We are all settling into our lives in San Francisco in different ways. Martin and I finally understand what Erika meant by "drafty old Victorian" and "damp cold", and we spend the majority of our time at home in the laundry room/Martin's office (makes keeping an eye on those delicates in the dryer easy to do) or Right Next To the gas fireplace. Erika, on the other hand, having learned in New York about The Importance of Wearing Hats, has been out and about, visiting her new favorite San Francisco institution - the Alemany Farmer's Market - as often as she can.

The Alemany farmer's Market is NOTHING like the Ferry Building farmer's market.

A comparison:

Ferry Building produce: beautiful, organic, heirloom, and priced for the tourists
Alemany produce: not *certified* organic (the process is expensive and time-consuming and many farmers grow produce organically without getting certified), incredibly diverse, and priced for the locals. I've seen raw peanuts, hand of Buddha, pink lemons, smoke-stained grapefruit from Riverside, and even a lone Durian fruit. Where do they GET this stuff?

Ferry Building prepared food booths: Ten-dollar sandwiches from well-known San Francisco restaurants
Alemany food booths: 2-dollar Pupusas, Tacos and Tamales!

Ferry Building Shoppers: Designer sweats and strollers, tourists from places where lettuce doesn't grow year round gawking at the foodie paradise around them
Alemany Shoppers: Everyone else and by everyone, I mean EVERYONE: Grey-haired, heavily pierced gay men comparing bok choy with little old Chinese ladies. Veiled Muslim women haggling with Mexican farmers. Wiccan lesbians (see photo of car belonging to aforementioned females). A radiantly beautiful African woman teaching an Asian grandmother how to play bongos. One hard-to-ignore blonde in platform boots and a black corset that made her cleavage so prominent that she could have hidden a few bunches of rainbow chard in there and nobody would have been the wiser. I am not making any of this up - these are ACTUAL examples that I witnessed.

Ferry Building entertainment: Jamaican steel drum band or those annoying Peruvian pipes
Alemany entertainment: The Cat Lady!

Ok, I need to take a break here to explain the Cat Lady. She is probably in her 70s or even her 80s, and she plays ragtime music that must be from her childhood. She has some sort of boom box laying down the main track, and she accompanies it with a variety of instruments, my favorite of which are the saws. She uses a bow to play saws of various sizes like violins, all the while keeping time by "tap-dancing" her toy cat with her foot! And not just any cat - this feline sports star-shaped pasties! Suffice to say, the Cat Lady draws a crowd every Saturday (see picture). [Editor's note: Actually you can also see the blonde in the platform boots in this picture, behind the cat lady. Her cleavage, however, is hidden.]

In other news, Erika is also very busy out-growing all of her clothes. The Belly at 20 weeks is a Thing to Behold. She still managed to fit into a cocktail dress for the company Christmas party last night, but it was a stretch (literally). Ah, yes, the Company Christmas party. Erika has again succumbed to the world of full-time employment, at least for the next 4 months. The job was too good to pass up, especially when the urban goat farm did not work out.

Martin is busy plotting our move to Sonoma County (some time next year?), which is fine with me as long as the new house has a proper heating system and I am allowed to go out in the yard and sun myself. I have discovered the roof in our current apartment (see picture) but it makes Erika and Martin nervous when I spend too much time up there.

The kittens return next week, when Erika and Martin go to Prague. I am dreading sharing my space in front of the fire, but at least I get to eat junk food for two weeks.