by Timothy Rutt
The Eat Well Market -- after a single appearance on Jan. 29 -- may have shut down for good.
Market manager Aimee Silver said that the scheduled March 10 market has been cancelled and she's in the process of notifying vendors, volunteers, and others.
"I'm gonna lose money on this," she said. "There's a lot more goes into putting on a market than people realize, and a lot goes into dismantling it."
Silver blamed two anonymous complaints lodged with the county health department, one before the Jan. 29 market, and one after. In an email to the market's mailing list, she said that "Some malicious person has turned us in repeatedly to the Health Dept in an intentional effort to get the market shut down."
She wrote that "this wasn't the Health Department's fault, so please don't complain to them - all the people we dealt with at the Health Dept. itself were exceptionally reasonable and decent human beings, they were only following their legal obligation to respond to complaints like this."
The Jan. 29 market had a variety of vendors and food items for at the membership-only market. Silver was encouraging people to eat the food onsite as well, as a general community gathering.
However, the prospect of dealing with complaints and investigations each time she held a market went into the decision to shut it down. "The health department investigation was lengthy and time-consuming, and although the complaint was eventually closed, this was so disruptive to our organizing efforts and so upsetting to our vendors that we are forced to cancel the March 10th market," Silver wrote.
Silver told Altadenablog, "I put like 800 hours into putting this thing together," as well as her personal funds, so closing the market, to be held at the Girl Scout camp, Camp Mariposa on Santa Rosa Avenue and Mariposa St., is a disappointment, but she didn't want to put her vendors in potentital jeopardy.
UPDATE: SIlver called to say she is a little less willing to drive a stake through it than she was at our initial interview -- she said that she is reassessing the options for the next couple of weeks.
