I <3 the Noe Valley Farmers Market

I treasure the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market as much as the next guy, and truly there are many things there that you cannot get anywhere else, like the avocado guy and the date guy. But in spite of my best intentions, I cannot pry myself out of bed early enough to schlep down there on a  Saturday morning to get my marketing done before it turns into a Boschian hell scene of tourists shambling like zombies, gawking at but not purchasing the gorgeous produce, as if it were some museum piece. If I can make it there by 10 am, I might manage to get my shopping done. By 10:15, I want to claw my own head off and splatter the crowd with my boiling blood.

Luckily for me, a mere two square blocks from my front door, the Noe Valley Farmers Market runs concurrently with it. Yes, it's smaller. No, it doesn't have nearly the kaleidoscopic range of lovely produce as down on the waterfront. But it does nearly always have everything I need, from farms I like and trust (hello, tomatoes and strawberries from Tomatero Farm in November!), and, aside from the nuisance of embankments of strollers that can be difficult to navigate around, I rarely am driven to self-medication after a Saturday morning visit.

Be sure to hit up some of our other wonderful neighborhood farmers markets, like Castro on Wednesdays and Mission Community Market on Thursdays, too! (I used to update a map for SFWeekly that had all the markets and their schedules; the 2012 version is still live.)