Coconut Grove Farmers Market proprietor Stan Glaser tells me that after a national story broke about the market some 30 years ago (he has lost the clip), visitors began coming from as far as Fort Myers up Florida’s Gulf Coast and from Boca Raton up the Atlantic.
Miami vacationers from around the world soon increased the every-Saturday crowd to 2,000-to-3,000 throughout the year.
Those travelers indicate how where we live, and not just where we visit, can become a form of climate action.
The market is a corporate affiliate of Glaser Organic Farms 30 miles south of Miami in the Redland agricultural area.
People come mainly for the organic food and for the healthy vibe. Also because the half-acre site between the Black and white districts of the Grove is unpaved under its trees and unpretentious.
People show up for the fixings of meals accented by island flavors and the lilting banter of islanders from Jamaica to Trinidad who display them for sale: machete-scalped cold coconuts with a straw poked in for the water, banana and mango varieties only found in specialty markets in cities of the Caribbean diaspora.
It’s an island-hopper’s fruit salad of guava, papaya, soursop, sweetsop, tamarind, as fresh as it comes.
Stan judges from the languages spoken, the crowd comes from around the global South, the Middle East, from satellites of the former USSR, England, Romania, Russia. Think “LinkedIn” under the shade trees.
Thirty years ago, Stan met his second life’s companion Tracy Fleming at the market. Tracy had relocated from Orange County, California to work on indexing an English translation of the Shrimad Bhagavatam, a 5,000-year-old holy document, from its original Sanskrit. After that, she made futons on Miami Beach that she sold at the market. Stan invited her to the farm, by then a sustainable business of 20 acres, where Tracy is head chef at the farm that now sells to all Whole Foods stores in Florida and distributes to markets around North America. That’s up from an experimental patch that he first acquired with its native soil intact that has allowed organic row crops to yield efficient harvests without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
Stan also found his accounts receivable manager on another good Saturday. She’s part of a year-round farm team of between 25 and 50.
Market transitions
At its start across the street in 1977, the market was more than twice its current size. High weeds there had hidden the discarded wallets emptied of cash in a neighborhood where their owners shouldn’t have been.
Now Stan wonders how long he has at the current site, as development extends west from its shoreside village and marina with multistory residential buildings that replace the one-story housing of distinct Bahamian character that once surrounded the market lot.
The move would be to a third location for the market Around 1990, Stan was given 3 days’ notice that the original site would be developed for a pharmacy. Development had begun marching into the Black quarter.
When I opened the market in 1977, it was meant to extend the vibe of the Miami-Bahamas Goombay Festival, which earlier that year celebrated the first nationally recognized Bahamian heritage event that both Grove districts shared despite their racial separation.
Goombay, that came to draw 300,000-to-400,000 celebrants in June each year, followed by the weekly year-round market, introduced Miami’s myriad newcomers to the city’s origins as an already diverse international hub that followed 3 centuries after Spain took possession of Cuba and that global flight capital would later vastly augment.
Big concept for a small lot
The market has always run independently to achieve its social purpose. I acquired the needed licenses, and city hall left me alone. I paid taxes on earnings I took home. I eventually charged vendors $10 to set up for whatever space they needed but provided no tents or tables and carried no insurance.
Differently, Stan provides tents for vendors, as well as benches for shoppers, some of whom stay for lunch prepared on site. Vendors leave the site litter free when they shut down.
Stan also has never sought county or city participation in the project, though the city has now come forward to help relocate the market if that becomes necessary.
He says it may be the high rent he pays that will want the owner to keep the market in place. He says a property owner’s representative shows up from time to time who likes the market.
When Stan first came to sell across the street, I was paying only for the sweat to keep the lot maintained. Stan now pays monthly rent and for insurance into the thousands. That’s covered by more than 100 vendors that each Saturday pay in the mid two figures for limited space. Although Glaser Organic Farms occupies some 40 percent of the site, his way of doing business with the other vendors has generated a waiting list.
I think of the market as the purposeful community of the Burning Man or of the fully fledged community of Brigadoon that pops up only once each 100 years.
Stan isn’t from Miami. He was born to a family from Perth Amboy during WWII, so that in that particular way he fits in as a Miami newcomer. He has landed in different places before, adapted, sometimes stayed for years at a time. Pictures show him still tall, gaunt, and bearded. He earned a pair of bachelor’s degrees from a 5-year program at RPI in construction and architecture.
His zeitgeist is nomadic and tribal. He’s a trader.
Long stays abroad begin
Stan’s first stay abroad lasted for 4 years that started with 5 months of intense training in Persian for a Peace Corps assignment in Iran. Yet on arrival, he couldn’t understand a word that cab drivers spoke. Peace Corps linguists taught in the Persian of poets and not in street talk. He learned that too.
A progressive governor of Kermanshah under the Shah of Iran’s rule made Stan the city planner for 19 municipalities in his state. The governor wanted thousands of trees planted. In a place where corruption was rampant, Stan could be trusted to make decisions that could fairly make some families millionaires.
He was quick to respect Muslim customs. He learned to let the most senior person in teams he led to be first in passing through doors, and to avoid showing the bottoms of his sandals when seated. As a male in his 20’s, he was all the time passing among unmarried young Persian women. He says he never even stared.
He shopped in open air markets that supplied only local foods. The only choices offered were limited by quality, price and vendor personality. He learned to bargain. He lived with co-workers in a middle class compound with live-in servants.
When his Peace Corps assignment ended, Stan stayed on another year and then accepted a consulting contract.
Stan felt discombobulated only on returning to America. He was overwhelmed by our overconsumption, our isolation instead of living among full community, and our displays of wealth. He came from an ambitious merchant family that during WWII had relocated to Orlando. Stan’s 2 siblings had earned doctorate degrees, a younger brother in medicine, deceased, and an older sister in math.
Sensitively observant of foreign customs, he nonetheless offended his own father when he returned to Perth Amboy to visit by wearing sandals and his hair long.
NOTES
For an earlier posting on Coconut Grove, https://medium.com/@herbhiller/the-climate-traveler-a-small-hotel-in-a-sunny-place-for-shady-people-e628e22afe31
https://www.sohosandiego.org/enews/images/0521peacecorps2017.pdf, p. 6. Reference to Stan in Kermanshah, Iran while in the Peace Corps.
https://www.miamiherald.com, In Miami, development threatens Coconut Grove organic; local article 279536354, Sep 20, 2023
