I spent the late afternoon today falling into interesting conversation after interesting conversation with people at the market. I met three Temple students who often hang out in Center Court, got an opportunity to hear the scoop on the new Foster’s store at 4th and Market from one of employees in the Market store and chatted with a young woman who recently moved to the area from San Francisco with her boyfriend. She described the move as a “geographic compromise” and is finding settling into Philly a bit challenging.

It was getting close to 6 pm as I wrapped up the last conversation in order to go home, but I’ve been dreaming of a green bean, tomato and basil salad, so with those last few minutes before closing, I swung through OK Lee’s produce stall. I picked up the beans and the basil (I already had the tomatoes) as well as a pineapple (which had been denuded of its leafy headdress) and a container of cut up melon.

The man at the west cash register quickly rung up my purchases, pressed total and started mumbling under his breath when the amount due was $6.66. The one thing I could clearly pick out was, “Customers don’t like that number.” He proceeded to subtract $.01 from the total, so that it no longer showed the numerical sign of the devil. He visibly relaxed when the total was altered, turned to me smiling and accepted my money. I handed him a small stack of $1 bills along with a few quarters. I tried to give him the extra penny that he had subtracted, but he refused, as if trying to deny that the screen had ever shown that offensive number.

Over the weekend, I got a note from Paul Steinke, the general manager of the market. He said,

Philbert, our bronze pig in the Reading Terminal Market’s Center Court, took in $1,086 during May from customers, merchants and staff. These funds will be sent to Washington, DC to help the merchants of Eastern Market, which was heavily damaged by fire on April 30th (see below). Click here for up-to-date information about what’s happening with Eastern Market.

Thanks to all who stopped by to donate their money to the effort!

This Sunday, June 3rd, Tootsie’s Salad Express (I never knew that Tootsie’s was included in their name until I got the announcement about this event) will be hosting a Pancake Breakfast to support Philadephia’s local firefighters and the Hepatitis C Awareness Fund.  You’ll be able to get your pancakes between the hours of 9 am and 2 pm.

I’ve been told that sometime that day, the Market management will hopefully have a tally of how much they raised to benefit the displaced merchants from Washington, D.C.’s fire-ravaged Eastern Market.  All of the donations placed in the bank beneath Philbert the Pig (who lives in Center Court) during the month of May are being donated to the Eastern Market cause.

When I first moved to Philadelphia, my world was small. I lived at one end of Center City and worked on the other end, a distance that spanned about 13 blocks on the same street. I didn’t have a car and didn’t know much about how Septa worked outside of my small downtown bubble.

In those days, I shopped at Reading Terminal Market because it was within walking distance from my apartment and I could get everything there that I needed for a week’s worth of meals.  However, I had never shopped at a place like it before.  Growing up in Portland, OR we stuck mostly to grocery stores, with an occasional stop at a Farmer’s Market.

I was also drawn to the Market because of how it was different from what I had known.  It was foreign to me in a way that made it feel magical.  I loved that my sandwich meats got wrapped in paper and that when I bought a slab of salmon it was plucked out of the case and deposited in a plastic bag.  I had never experienced meat, poultry or fish that wasn’t stamped with a “sell by” date and pre-packaged in styreofoam and shrink wrap.

During that first year, every couple of months my cousins Winnie and David would call early on a Saturday morning and tell me to meet them at the Market in an hour.  We’d have breakfast at the Down Home Diner or the Dutch Eating Place and then we’d wander.  David wouldn’t last long before finding a seat, but Winnie and I would walk every aisle.  She’d stop at a counter and ask me if I’d tried this Amish specialty or that exotic piece of fruit.  Whether the answer was yes or now, she’d call someone over and buy whatever it was that she’d spotted, enough for both of us to take some home.

Why do you shop at Reading Terminal?