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you might think that we were missing the boat by going to the very blue-collar alemany farmers' market today, since it was also the Grand Opening Day of the fancy farmers' market in the newly-refurbished ferry building at the end of market street, complete with all the trimmings and celebration hoo-ha. but no - we wanted to see the precita eyes mural collective's new mural in progress at the alemany market. it was to begin last weekend, but it was pouring rain and we didn't go, thinking they wouldn't either. but apparently they did, since several of the bays were already as good as finished, several more partly done, and the rest had their blue sky painted above and the white primer on the walls below. today was a perfect spring day - blue sky with fluffy clouds, mild and pleasant. we arrived about eleven, lucked into a good parking space, and began wandering. the first music we heard was a man playing classical music on a steel drum. the vegetables looked great - today was a good day for asparagus of all diameters and lengths. greens of all kinds and nations were everywhere, as were enormous beets and carrots (they have the tiny baby ones down at the ferry building), citrus of all kinds with delicious samples, lengths of sugar cane, honey and almonds, mysterious roots, mysterious other, fennel, big fragrant strawberries, lots of varieties of potatoes, etc etc. even dogs were shopping for vegetables. we bought a big bunch of asparagus and a bigger bunch of "chinese broccoli" - sorry I don't know its real name, but it looks like long thin stems of dark green broccoli with only a few buds and maybe a flower or two at the tips, just a little bitter - maybe what the italians call rapini? we had it stirfried crisp with garlic and sesame oil for dinner tonight. yum. the painters arrived shortly and began work on several bays - prepping the arches with bright color, transferring the designs from cartoons to the walls, mixing paint and painting the murals. we wandered around while mark took photos and harvested sounds. we saw (and heard) a lady doing a kind of one-person-band thing and playing a saw ("whispering") along with an astounding recorded track that might have been karaoke music for retired carnival workers or the elevator music at zippy the pinhead's office building. she also had a sort of marionette of a cat which she made dance with a foot pedal (see the movie here - there's her saw, too). we also enjoyed lunch - mark had a cajun dog from dad's dogs (see lurid picture). cb had a fine green chile pork tamale which seemed very homemade and wonderful. we also checked out the great local grafitti (1, 2, 3) surrounding the market, including cool vehicles (1, 2, detail) and a long, long tribute wall to a grafitti artist named dream (1, 2, 3, 4). there was also a very cool set of double doors which upon closer inspection look like this. we live in the coolest part of town. and our saturday farmers' market turns into a flea market on sunday. what a fine fieldtrip. thanks for checking it out.
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