City Hopping: First We Take Charlottesville, Then We Take Manhattan
I am just paraphrasing Leonard Cohen's song...The Neighborhood Leadership Institute encouraged us to take on some sort of a project to help our community get better. Some people got interested in how to make local bus transit more "cool", so they suggested having poems written by city kids available on buses (it is going to be done this summer). Another group is going team up with the city fire department and make sure that every house in Charlottesville has a smoke alarm. Along with 4 other wonderful people, I decided to concentrate our attention on the City Market. All of us love it so much and go there every weekend. Well, it is easy to talk about the improvements but it is not easy to do. New spaces, more market days in different locations, adding recipes and cooking classes - all of this sounded very interesting but not easily implementable in a short time.
When we met with Stephanie Maloy, the market manager, she said the City Market is the most popular in the region; vendors love it because they can make money here. She has a long waiting list of vendors and wanted to know how many people come on Saturdays. So, on May 16th we all manned the City Market entrances in order to get a head count. By 6:45AM the market vendors were already ready to go. I usually go a lot later, but there is something special about being there before the big crowds. My spot was at the bottom of the hill and frankly I did not expect it to be a busy place,since there was construction next to it and it just did not look like a very good entrance space.
Little did I know. Not only did I get to see all my friends there, I clicked over 1,200 hundred people before 11AM. By the end of the day we had 4,442 visitors overall, and over 1,700 of whom came in through the hill area! Stephanie found our information to be very beneficial; she will be able let the vendors know that the hill area is a desirable area, and vendors need to take advantage of it. This will make many vendors very happy.
I have to brag about another great adventure that awaited me after the triumphant count at the local market. My husband and I saw Leonard Cohen at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday the 17th. What a treat!
Labels: City Market, Farmer's Market
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