By David Hutchinson
When was the last time you visited the OB Farmers Market? For me, it had been a while.
Over the five years I’ve lived here, I’ve treated the market as a low-priority option for Wednesday night hangouts — something I only visit when a friend comes to visit. We amble along at the pace of our conversation, breathing in the aromas of grilled chicken and gyros as they mix with the oceany evening air, glancing at signs without taking much in. We’re there to catch up, so the market usually fades into a pleasant, indistinct background.
Ask a few questions, though, and the scene snaps into focus. When I stopped by last Wednesday night to poke around for the Rag, I found a hub for entrepreneurs, spiritualists, and community organizers, each pursuing their own highly specific dream.
At the vendor’s corner at Cable and Newport, Carlos De Nicolas presides over a kaleidoscopic array of 3D-printed robots, dinosaurs, and dragons.
He started making the toys as a hobby, taking requests from his son, but when he lost his job last February, De Nicolas saw a business opportunity. Today, he sells at four markets a week, recharging his supply with a fleet of ten printers that run around the clock.
His favorite model, a dragon with articulating joints, takes about 14 hours to print at its standard size, but some of his larger wares can take up to 32 hours.
For market research, De Nicolas relies on his son — a “67” model introduced at his request has sold well with OB’s youngsters.
Further down Newport, Kris Capiendo chats with customers while juggling orders for boba and his signature pastry: the mochi donut.
Originally from Chula Vista, Kris has bounced around the Pacific Rim for decades, living in Seattle and the Philippines before moving back to California several years ago. When he first encountered mochi donuts on a trip to Japan, he had no idea they would become the foundation for his business — at the time, Kris and his wife both worked in healthcare.
But in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, they began serving the pastries out of their garage as a lockdown side hustle, and when they started clearing a hundred orders a day, they quit their day jobs. Four years later, they opened a brick-and-mortar store, but Kris still likes to sell at farmers markets. “Sometimes it’s better to bring your product to the customer than wait for them to come to you.”
His advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: test your idea at markets and with pop-ups before investing in a physical storefront. But once you get it dialed, “get out of your comfort zone and go all in.”
Orion McAllister, known to locals as “OB Hippie Jesus,” offers a similar dose of affirmation to market-goers in the form of handwritten messages. He actually has 188 of them, stacked in his closet on handwritten cardboard signs. For the past three years, McAllister has hoisted his messages of peace and love aloft on a eucalyptus branch at the OB Farmers Market. He stands out by moving slowly — walking at about half the speed of the foot traffic around him — dressed in red to convey “love and warmth.”
Despite working two jobs to make ends meet, McAllister hasn’t missed a market in years. “It’s a way to give back,” he says, but the benefits are reciprocal: “Whenever I’m out here, I always have at least one conversation that changes my outlook on life.”
In an out-of-the-way booth tucked between Krisp and Island Life Foods, Whitney Moore is trying to change our outlook on produce.
She’s here representing Capay Organic’s CSA box, which distributes produce from numerous certified organic farms across the state. Her passion for sustainable agribusiness began nearly ten years ago, when a small family farm where she worked in Northern California went out of business. For Moore, the foreclosure was a lightbulb moment, revealing that a commitment to social justice can only go as far as the business model that sustains it.
“It propelled me,” she says, on a decade-long journey to find better models for agriculture. Capay Organic offers one such model, hiring year-round employees instead of seasonal labor, rotating crops to protect soil health, and encouraging biodiversity by setting aside areas for wildlife and California native plants. “In a world that feels like it’s burning in a lot of ways, it feels good to be the change you want to see.”
Walking home that night, Moore’s words stuck with me. They seemed to nail the spirit of the market: a weekly meet-up for dreamers striving, however they can, to be the change they want to see.
