Pearl Farmers Market Report: Give it a Try...

This morning my wife and I headed down to the Pearl Brewery where they are holding the weekly Farmers Market now. We had heard a few good comments about it and were eager to see it for ourselves, especially since we had been by when it was still a work in progress.We were lucky to find a parking spot in the lot just under 281 and made the short walk toward the Full Goods building (I guess that is what it is called). Lots of people out and about and I could sense from the people we passed by that this was more of the Organic Crowd. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but you would understand if you had a line up of 6 people who regularly shop at Whole Foods and another 6 people who shop at a regular HEB. I'm sure that based upon clothing, shoes, and accouterments, you could pick out which 6 were the Organic Crowd.The entire area is clean and very welcoming. There seems to be a lot of people who are somehow working for the place, helping people with directions and such. Inside the Full Goods building, it looks pretty spiffy with all sorts of solar powered things and I especially liked the huge ceiling fan that looked big enough to be a helicopter rotor. The building is obviously still working on attracting tenants, but I think it will be a nice place to visit once more shops are open.The Farmers Market itself was set up in a back parking lot and it was pretty much full with vendors. And as you could imagine from the description of the clientele, I'm pretty certain all the vendors were strictly organic type farmers.We attempted to purchase some Bison jerky, but the guy was sold out. We actually thought about purchasing some of his Bison steaks, but had no way of keeping them cool since we were not headed directly home. Maybe next time.Halfway through the market, we decided to go down to the Pearl Springs portion of the River Walk. It is really, really nice and if it had not been for the heat, we probably would have walked more than just a few hundred yards of it. I'll post the pictures I took of it on the Flickr Page, but I did want to show this lucky dog who decided to take a dip.They have a small lock system for diverting water, it appears, to some of the water features. This small little water line is about 16 inches wide and maybe a foot or so deep. This lady was walking her Greyhound when she decided to cool herself off. I can't recall the dogs name, but my wife thanks it was Ginger. Anyway, she and her owner attracted lots of curious onlookers.Back into the Full Goods building, we went into the one shop that was open and thriving. The Mellisa Guerra store is half art store and half kitchen store. We went in and it was very impressive and worthy of a look around. At some point though, we felt a little uncomfortable by the young lady who would accost customers and politely request that she take the items they wanted to purchase and hold them at the counter.

That's fine I suppose, but it got a little old being followed around to see if we would pick up something else to purchase, and naturally need to have it placed at the counter to save us from having to carry it ourselves. WTF? We cut our shopping short and while we stood at the counter waiting for the cashier to locate our items, my wife said she would just as soon not make the purchase. And our surveillance officer standing behind us seemed not to mind one bit.

Don't let our uncomfortable experience sway your opinion, I suspect riffraff like us should just learn to deal with it.

We really enjoyed it otherwise and will certainly return, though I suspect if we need anything from the Mellisa Guerra shop, we'll handle it online. Okay; not likely.