St. Mark's Greenmarket: Watch out for the Goodfeathas!

Tuesday saw me visiting the St. Mark's Greenmarket, which is one of the smaller Greenmarkets available. The location is, unsurprisingly, right in front of St. Mark's Church in a little parklike area there. It is located at 10th st. and 2nd Avenue, and it has longer hours than most of the Greenmarkets around, running from 8 AM to 7 PM on Tuesdays. It's not available year round, but that seems to be true for most of the Greenmarkets. I arrived around 3 PM and found that things were about as busy as the small area where the stalls are set up would permit:


As the first Greenmarket I've visited that had a Church looming over it, I must provide a warning about imposing buildings near your farmers' market: Large stone buildings with food supplies out front attract the flying rats also known as pigeons. I, and my outback hat, found this out the hard way when we got dive-bombed. If you're going to be going to this greenmarket, stay under the merchants' awnings!

Now, of course, this little incident gave me some exciting information about the merchants there. Rather than watching my plight with a disconcerned detachment, one of the staffpeople offered me a bunch of paper towels as a means to get the bird's artistic expression off of me. Considering that she was under no obligation to do that, I was left with a pretty good impression of the farmers' who frequent this market.

Other positives include the proximity to Union Square. The market is a short walk from the major subway stop there, and is even closer to the Astor Place 6 train stop, so it is accessible very easily from the entire East Side and slightly less easily from the West Side.

Food-wise, there was a lot of fruit at this farmers' market for its small size. The Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Greenmarket had a crazy variety of tomatoes, but St. Mark's had a similar variety of apples between the few stalls that were there, and enough different peaches to impress me also. I ended up getting $7 worth of tree-ripened peaches and apples, which are making for good snacks. There was also a surprising variety of pears, which I haven't noticed a lot of at other markets. This picture, for example, is mostly apples:

If we return to the NYU student from the Dag Hammarskjold post- and since I think we'll be revisiting her repeatedly, I think I'll give her a name, say, "Amelia Earheart" - we can find a definite use for this Greenmarket. It runs on days when Union Square is not available and is very close to there. Let's say Amelia ran out of fruit because her voracious roommate got the munchies and she simply must have apples for the pie she's making to celebrate the anniversary of her first transatlantic flight! Well, look no further than St. Mark's if that party happens to fall on a Tuesday.

Will they save your pie?

Additionally, it offered me something that the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza market did not. It's pretty important, with lots of types of bread, that you are able to get it fresh on the day you intend to use it. It's also important to me personally that bread be produced using good ingredients by a baker who knows what he is doing. Well, at the St. Mark's Greenmarket, there was a bread stall. With only four stalls, I was pretty happy that one quarter of this market was dedicated towards baking. The bakery was named Bread Alone, and it is an organic, kosher bakery, so perfect for the religious, Jewish, organic-conscious Amelias out there. For $4.75 I picked up a multigrain organic artisan sliced loaf that has made for excellent snacking and will be used for breakfast toast in coming days. I highly recommend it.


As a small market, this isn't a bad stop if there's something you need, and it has fresh bread, which is always a plus for me. It's not something that you would want to visit every day, necessarily, but in a pinch, St. Mark's may just save the day.