In its 30th year of existence, University District Farmers Market is an indelible part of Seattle

In most other settings, this gentleman would be quite the curiosity. But not at the West Seattle Farmers Market or any of its six siblings spread throughout the city: Capitol Hill, Columbia City, Lake City, Magnolia, Phinney, and the granddaddy of them all, the University District Neighborhood Farmers Market. Here, the old purple wizard with the PVC pipe is just part of the rhapsody of life, free to be himself amidst a weekly concert of hippie commerce.

The seed for Seattle’s network of farmers markets (including Ballard, Madrona, and Wallingford, which are organized under a different umbrella) started some 32 years ago on an avenue in California. A woman named Chris Curtis, ’73, had just sold the Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop she owned in the University District and was taking some time off to travel and contemplate her next move in life.

“I was lucky enough to just be in Southern California on a Wednesday,” says Curtis while seated on a long wooden bench inside University Heights Center, her hair streaked with purple. “They have a beautiful downtown farmers market in Santa Monica, and I thought, ‘This is what a farmers market could be in Seattle, in the U District.’

“I had a business background and some friends here in the U District, but it took a long time. For a year-and-a-half, it was all volunteers. We had to have U-Heights sign off on it. Then, of course, we needed farmers.”

At the time, Seattle didn’t have any neighborhood farmers markets — unless one were to count Pike Place Market, one of the most renowned farmers markets in the world and a tremendous resource for Curtis when she set her vision into motion.

“I brought in people from Pike Place Market, from WSU Cooperative Extension, anybody I knew in agriculture and asked, ‘How are we going to get our arms around farmers that go direct to market like this?’” says Curtis. “Most farmers don’t sell like this. Most farmers have big commodity crops or giant dairy herds or whatever.”

After consulting her steering committee, Curtis sent out a survey seeking advice from 270 farmers around Washington state. Ninety of them replied, and half of those respondents said they might be interested in selling their food at the U District Farmers Market if and when it got off the ground.

“They didn’t want to see crafts; they didn’t want to see crocheted Barbie clothes,” recalls Curtis, a Wallingford resident whose ringtone is “She’s A Rainbow” by The Rolling Stones. “They loved the purity of the vision.”

On opening day, in 1993, Curtis had 22 vendors, 17 of which were farmers and another five either bakers or nurseries. She hoped the market, then held in the U Heights parking lot, would attract 500 shoppers. Twice as many showed up, and a Seattle staple took flight.

“The University District Farmers Market was really the first all-farm, producers-only market in Seattle outside of Pike Place, which is its own thing,” says Jennifer Antos, Curtis’ successor as executive director of Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Markets. “It opened Seattle’s eyes to the idea of buying directly from the producer in your own neighborhood. Thirty years later, it’s just part of the fabric of Seattle and our neighborhoods. The U District market really started all that.”