Headhouse Beef

As farmers' market season approaches here in Southeast Pennsylvania, I've got a longstanding gripe about one of Philadelphia's most popular markets - Headhouse Farmers' Market at Second and Lombard Streets - that I'd like to get off my chest.

For those unfamiliar with Headhouse Farmers' Market, it's housed under the historic Shambles structure, a building built for merchants to gather at and sell their wares. The Shambles is essentially a long, narrow, covered walkway.

Vendors at Headhouse Farmers' Market line their tables up inside the covered walkway along the outer edges with the front of their display facing towards the inside of the structure, making shopping only possible by walking down what is now, thanks to vendor's tables taking up room, an even narrower walkway.

It's frustrating and miserable to shop at Headhouse Farmer's Market with the throngs of distracted people with their overstuffed canvas shopping bags, toe-crunching baby strollers, and dogs underfoot, all stuffed in a narrow hallway. I've never visited a more tight, claustrophobic, ass-bumping farmer's market in my life!

Last year, I wanted to kiss the one vendor (forgot their name, but they sold lots of peaches and apples), Three Springs Fruit Farm, who moved their table out from underneath the walkway to the very spacious sidewalk just outside the Shambles' roof, and, essentially, formed a wide-open room to duck into from the narrow confines of the market. Finally, someone was thinking!

Please, please, please, Headhouse Farmers' Market manager, make the vendors get their asses out from underneath the narrow walkway.

Make "rooms" like the one vendor did, use the sidewalk, heck, why not even block traffic on the one block of Second St. between Lombard and Pine and use the street (they already block the northbound side, which only one or two lunch vendors make use of, but should block the southbound side, as well).

The Shambles is a beautiful building, but don't be confined by it.

Do this one thing for me, and I won't rant about the boutique produce prices.