Wed, 05/09/2007 - 1:44pm

This past Sunday I took my mother to Florida Avenue Market, located on Florida Avenue and close to New York Avenue Metro stop. Though I’ve lived a mere two blocks from the market for almost a year now, this was my first time visiting. Florida Avenue Market is mostly a wholesale market with cheap cuts of meat displayed on wooden blocks for your viewing. I must confess that you have to have a strong stomach to handle the assault of smells that hit your nose the second you wander downstairs to the food court. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t had any real breakfast before heading out to the market, but wandering through the narrow aisles of the food court, the smells became a bit much for me to handle.

There’s a fish market, a Western African wholesaler (this was closed on Sunday, unfortunately), a Spanish/Mexican wholesaler, Asian importers, and beef and poultry shops. And outside, in a fenced-in area, is the flea market section. There you can pick up anything from spare cell phone batteries to padded bras, a living room set (for only $50!) to wooden spoons. My mother and I were enticed to view furniture selections with the cries of “free soda over here!” and there was a whole section where clothes were being sold for a dollar. Looking for small cute vases to hold your roses? Well, guess what, you can find them here for about $0.50 each. Looking for new mirrors to hang in your hallway? Hey, over here, find them for about $45. What about that random missing part of your cell phone that you’ve been thinking of replacing for some time now? Dig through a plastic container “where cell phone parts go to die” and you may just walk away with that random piece after all.

A boom-box was blasting old ‘60s music from speakers that appeared to sometimes work and sometimes spazz out. The smells of something frying floated in the air but my appetite had long since vanished. You need a dash of attitude, three scoops of easy-going smiles, and a sprinkle of understanding to enjoy this market. I wished I had engaged the vendors in longer conversations, gotten to know their stories, and interviewed some shoppers. Oh yes, I will come again, with a fuller stomach and a long list of random items that I need for my apartment, because lord knows, if I even remotely think I might need it, that item would be here waiting for me.

To say that Florida Avenue Market is “rough around the edges” is putting things mildly, at best. It has a certain charm though. It’s no Eastern Market with its fresh flowers and vendors with expensive pretty things for sale. But it is your local farmers market, where you only need to stop in for that one specific thing, perhaps a pound of cheap chicken wings for dinner, and promptly leave. This is urban life at its… simplest? There’s talk of redeveloping the Market into something more (and lets be rather blunt here) “prettier”, and as a local resident I’ve been receiving notices to attend neighborhood meetings to discuss the future of the market. Like a sign for a new condo building just a block away that says “Pretty soon, you won’t recognize this place. Promise,” I know that the market and the whole area will undergo major redevelopment, despite a strong movement to fight it. What is truly unique and rather odd about Florida Market will soon disappear, and I fear that what would replace it would fall rather short on that “charming character” ingredient.

About the author
Ese Emerhi blogs at http://martiniturtle.wordpress.com

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