public market

This afternoon, I popped over to the first day of the Downtown Public Market on Ellicott and Center. First stop: Alston's Bone-Suckin Bar-B-Que sauce stand. The sample alone was worth the trip.  Then I had a couple of red hots from the Jackson St. Grill said.

The market closed early today after the National Weather Service sent out a severe thunderstorm warning.

It will open again next Thursday in the same location at 8:30 a.m.

The Downtown Public Market opens in the morning at 9:30 a.m.

Vendors this year include: Lloyd Christ Farms, S & T Christ Farms, J & W Fresh Farm Produce, Nice Farms, Schwab Farms & Watt Farm, Alston’s BBQ Sauce, Genesee ARC (Handmade) Pet Products, Nonna’s Vegetable Plants & Crafts & Pressed Flowers by L. Regatuso, Posy Power Peddler

Jackson St. Grill & Belladessa’s Pizza will serve hots, hamburgers, pizza & refreshments from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm.

The market runs every Thursday for the season from 9:30 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the corner of Center and Ellicott.

A Wal-Mart store in the works for the village of Le Roy may be the company's first ever to be shrunken down from its original size, according to the Daily News. Of course, that doesn't mean it still won't be a "Supercenter"—retail's answer to the question: What if people could buy socks, tomato sauce, a new bike and a gardenia all at the same store? So yes, the store planned for West Main Street in Le Roy will still be a Supercenter, only getting reduced from 163,700 square feet to 138,000.

Claims made in the article that this will be a "more environmentally-friendly" Wal-Mart seem somewhat dubious. Check out this quote from Le Roy's Code Enforcement Officer Gene Sinclair:

"It's still going to be a Supercenter, just smaller," he said. "The parking lot is more environmentally friendly, with four islands and a natural filtration system of trees and shrubs."

"We're told it's a new design for their stores and the first in the United States like this."

It's wonderful that everybody has caught the going green bug—especially the marketing departments of massive corporations—but I think we have to draw the line at "environmentally-friendly parking lot." Hasn't anyone ever listened to Joni Mitchell? What did they pave to put up a parking lot? Yep, that's right: paradise.

Anyway, good for Le Roy. Now they've got a Wal-Mart to go with the new Walgreens. Speaking of the Walgreens... construction of that is on hold now owing to a "blizzard of asbestos" encountered during the demolition of the old Masonic temple and its neighbors. (Hmm. Is there any connection between this blizzard of asbestos and the blizzard of words Charlie Gibson attributed to Sarah Palin last night?)

In other news, Tom Rivers paid a visit to the Rochester Public Market where a lot of Genesee County farms head every weekend to ply their wares before the big city crowds. It's another great article from a talented writer about a fun topic. So read it.

Attica resident Roddy Harris wrote a postapocalyptic novel about a brother and sister who try to rebuild their lives after 99 percent of the world is killed by terrorists who release "vast amoiunts of chemical and biological agents into the atmosphere." The article's headline is misleading: Attican pens 9/11 book. That's just not true. While the article begins by saying that Harris "turned his thoughts and feelings about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, into a novel," the novel is not about 9/11 at all. The book is titled: After Terrorism: A Survival Story. It's available from Publish America.

Former Chairman of the United States Chamber of Commerce's Board of Directors Paul S. Speranza told an audience at Genesee Community College yesterday that if the state wants to fix its economy, communities need to join together.

Speranza said New Yorkers need to move beyond parochialism and regional feuding. Speaking with one voice and forming coalitions among groups with divergent views is the way to get the state's economy back on track and to improve its quality of life, he said.

Paul Mrozek does an excellent job covering the speech, so be sure to check out the article if you're interested.

We encourage you to get out and pick up a copy of the Daily News at your local newsstand. Or, better yet, subscribe at BataviaNews.com.

Batavia bids an early adieu to another of its downtown amenities. Last week, the city announced the closure of the spray park two weeks early due to mechanical problems. Today, the Daily News tells us that the downtown public market is closed for the season, several months early—it was supposed to run through October 11.

Business Improvement District (BID) Manager Don Burkel said the decision was made Friday due to "a shortage of vendors and the lack of community support." The market that opened in late June ran from 9:00am to 2:00pm Saturdays in the parking lot at Ellicott and Jackson streets. On opening day there were maybe 10 vendors total. Lorraine Schaub said she was one of only three vendors when she showed up for the market most days. Schaub owns Cookies & Milk inside the mall. She blamed Burkel and the BID for the poor support, citing a lack of planning and promotion.

Says Schaub: "I don't think they worked on it ahead of time. It's a good thing we had tents; otherwise nobody would've known we were there."

Another vendor, Joan Shuknecht, owner of Ole Barn Country Market of Elba, said the BID did a fine job of promoting the market. She said she was doing well at the market though she could have done better. That sentiment is contrasted with Shuknecht saying elsewhere that during the Summer in the City festival she had to throw out 10 crates of produce because of a lack of sales, in part due to a lack of access to the market because of all the efforts concentrated on Summer in the City. She then told Burkel she would not be returning to the market.

We have not yet been able to reach Burkel for further comment, though he told the Daily News that he is not sure the BID will again support the market in 2009.

In other news:

• Area farmers assessed the damage from this summer's repeated hailstorms and found a beaten crop: whole fields of tomatoes and cucumbers wiped out, apples dented and bruised. They will seek additional federal disaster aid. Check out the extensive article by Tom Rivers for more details. One aspect of the issue not dealt with in much detail that would be interesting to hear more about is the affect the loss of so much produce will have on the market. Will it be strictly local? Will the local market not be affected at all?
• Batavia Downs hosted its fourth annual wiener dog races Sunday. Defending champion, Rudy, owned by Ann Schiller of Lancaster, won his first heat but came in second in the finals to Bambi, owned by Grace De Valder of Bergen.

As always, we encourage you to get out and pick up a copy of the Daily News at local newsstands. Or, better yet, subscribe at BataviaNews.com.

Every morning I get online and go mining for news, mostly Batavia news, because thats why I'm here: to inform Batavians. I plug in keywords in search fields. I read through the news briefs at WBTA's timely-kept Web site. I scan the digital newspapers in the area for anything (geographically) of interest to our readers here in Batavia and, more and more, around other parts of Genesee County as well. Nevertheless, some days, no matter how many information wells I plumb, no news comes up.

That being said, Monday's are almost always a guarantee for news. Something had to happen over the weekend. Someone must have done something worthy of that half-inch bold font headline. A party somewhere must have gone wrong, and now someone — or a few someones are cooling it in the clink.

Today, that wasn't the case. We heard from the county sheriff's deputies and the city police, but they were all about alcohol busts over the weekend. Whether that meant selling it to people who shouldn't have it or driving after drinking too much of it, that was all they reported about the weekend — to us, anyway.

So it got me thinking. What makes the news?

Well, without turning this into a debate about how we the media need to focus more on positive, happy, make-you-feel-good news — because there really is plenty of that; it just doesn't make the front pages all the time and more often than not isn't written well so isn't worth reading — the news I find in my morning searches will fall pretty cleanly into one of a few categories: bad news (car crashes, crime, high profile death), news released by Genesee Community College, finance or sports. But there wasn't much of any of it this morning.

So when Batavia's downtown business director Don Burkel walked into Main Street Coffee this morning and asked me what the scoop was, I told him: no scoop. I told him I searched and searched and couldn't come up with anything. What happened over the weekend, I asked him. Didn't stuff happen? Wasn't there news?

For sure, he said. Good news.

Batavia's Public Market opened for the season Saturday morning. Despite the weather threats of hail storms and the like, the market was a raving success. Folks came out to buy from vendors who were eager to sell their wares. And I can understand his elation. Public markets make me feel the same way, and it isn't even my job to get excited about downtown business. Public markets have seen a real resurgence in the past decade or so. For good reason. They're an intersection of culture and finance that harken back to the Greek agora, the public gathering place where everything happened. Whenever I get the chance to visit the market in Rochester, I get giddy. They've got good cheap eats. Fresh produce. You can typically hear at least three languages spoken. And somehow the otherwise avaricious act of purchasing for a small moment in time turns cultural. Unlike, say, big box retail shops, that mostly smell of plastic and make me feel more neurotic than usual and sometimes even hostile towards my people.

So there was that. But also...

Jackson Square hosted its second Friday night concert of the season. The Ghostriders played, the square filled, people danced. And the whole evening seemed a foreshadowing of the weekend to come — Ramble Music and Arts Fest.

Downtown was good cheer, straight up and down, this weekend. And Don told me all about it with a beaming smile. Because it really was a good weekend for Batavia. And that was the news. Summer arrived, and Batavians got out and took advantage. They stayed close to home, and close to home proved worthy of sticking around for.

All this to say, sometimes good news is exactly that and deserves its place in the cycle of crime, death, finance, sports. Not that all good news is real news. I bought a pair of sneakers recently, and they're comfortable, and that's good news for me. But I doubt anyone else would care, and they shouldn't.

There are so many ways a community gets out and acts like one, and when it does it so blatantly and in a way that blots out the bad that gets the front page most every other day, it's worthy of shining a light on.

So, if you've got a keyboard and an Internet connection, and you know that your town, village, city, neighborhood, hamlet got out and manufactured some good news that just doesn't seem to get the credit it deserves — blog about it. Write a post. Write it in a way that you think is interesting. Put yourself in the story. We're not journalism teachers. We won't call you out for that. Just tell the story. Because sometimes the news cycle lets us down, and we could all do with a good story told well of folks doing good things.

Batavia's Public Market will open for the season tomorrow at 9:00am in the Center and School streets parking lot. It will run every Saturday from then through October 11, from 9:00am to 2:00pm.

Belladessa's & Jackson Street Grill will be there with pizza and hots. Vendors will provide everything from produce and bread to cookies, cupcakes, pies, coffee, flowers, pottery and more. Batavia's Public Market accepts "NYS Farmer's Market Checks."

Call (585) 344-0900 for more information.

Batavia's Public Market is less than a month away and in need of a few more donations to help lock all the pieces into place. In particular, market director Don Burkel is looking for two picnic tables and a smallish outdoor shed. Also:

If you are an artist (painter, photographer, sculptor, etc.) or crafts person (cloth, jewelry, pottery, weaving, wood, etc.) that would like to sell your handmade products at the market please give us a call.

The market starts June 28 and runs through October 11, every Saturday from 9:00am to 2:00pm in the Center and School streets parking lot (across from O'Lacy's Irish Pub). You can expect fresh produce, baked goods, coffee, flowers, handmade jewelry and pottery, barbecue, Batavia-style pizza and more.

Call the Batavia Business Improvement District at (585) 344-0900 for more information.