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it that incorporates fresh produce into a lifestyle. In my family we always talk about the concept that food is love and that every meal should start from fresh ingredients and be enjoyed with good company; that is exactly what I see when I look at our market each week. Fresh local flavors, meals prepared with love and lots of happy people enjoying one another’s company.
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nother element that we try to incorporate Downtown on a consistent basis is free entertainment. Arts Obispo helps as each month fires off with Art After Dark and the opportunity for people to visit over 30 different locations with as many different artists’ work on display. Having that kind of participation with the local arts community is a real asset to our Downtown and even spreads into a daily stroll through our main streets. There are many installments of local art on the streets, on walls and hidden along our creek that speak to the desire of our community to have a colorful culture. To that point we try to do our part by adding live music to our events, whether it be at our holiday events, our Concerts in the Plaza Series during the summer, our Farmers’ Market side streets or our brand new Fresh Picked Concert Series at Farmers’. All of those events provide free music for crowds of all ages
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and tastes and we ensure that our artists are local so that if you hear them live once, you can hear them again and again if you so choose. The Fresh Picked Concert Series is a new addition to our musical lineup as a desire to expand the musical offerings to the East end of our market and has come out of a special relationship with a great friend of the Downtown, The San Luis Obispo Collection. In our discussion with their representative we found a great opportunity to bring the community a concert series that completely embodies our market ethic, “Discover. Local. Flavor.” The bands that we are featuring on the Harvest Stage at Union Bank are bands that you may or may not have already discovered but they are local and let me tell you, every one of them has flavor. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to come down to our next concert on May 7th and take a listen to Ragged Jubilee and their “garage blues” sound. I'm sure you're going to like them as much as we do!
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o the next time you have guests in town and you tell them about the Downtown SLO Farmers’ Market and they ask you why it’s so special, you can just smile and tell them, “Diversity. Let’s go take a look and taste the difference.” I look forward to bringing you all more diversity in the coming months and
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