The Price of Beauty at Farmers Markets

Stepping into Mercado Hidalgo hits you like a wave — not of chaos, but of life layered on top of itself. The first thing is color: stacks of limes and avocados so green they look painted, mountains of dried chiles glowing deep red, piñatas dangling overhead like paper lanterns. Then comes the smell: roasted nuts, tortillas toasting on griddles, the sweetness of aguas frescas drifting through the aisles.

Vendors call out prices with the rhythm of routine, their voices blending into the hum of families weaving between stalls, kids tugging at sleeves for a paleta or a bag of candy. History lingers in the air — tortillas stacked by hand, beans scooped by the pound, conversations traded with every transaction. It isn’t curated, it isn’t performative. It’s daily life.

Growing up in Norwalk, California, I lived around the corner from an indoor swap meet that mirrored much of what I later felt in Tijuana. Unlike the homogenized, corporate sprawl of suburban malls, the Norwalk Indoor Swapmeet reflected the cultures of its customers and vendors. It was where local youth bought baggy jeans, gold nameplates, and Nike Cortez shoes — styles rooted in Black and Latino neighborhoods. For many, the swap meet was a community hub, just as malls were for white teenagers.

But my experience of the swap meet was shaped by my parents’ perspective. We went for small knickknacks, while other families came for produce, piñatas, and long conversations with vendors while eating fresh fruit — melons and mangoes dusted with tajín and chamoy. Mexican snacks like bionicos and tacos spilled from stalls inside and food stands outside.

I begged my parents to let me try, but the answer was always no. The message I absorbed, quietly but firmly, was that it wasn’t for us. It was for them.

As a child, I didn’t see the invisible lines that separated cultures. But for my parents, both raised in the South — my father in Mississippi, my mother in Louisiana — food wasn’t just about taste. It was identity, safety, memory. Sunday dinners, church fish fries, backyard barbecues: those were our hubs. A mango with tajín and chamoy wasn’t simply unfamiliar, it was unnecessary when we already had our own traditions. Sometimes “no” is a protective reflex — about tethering children to what feels safe and ours.

They may have recognized the swap meet as a cultural hub, but it wasn’t their hub. For many Black parents navigating life beyond the South, there was an instinct to draw boundaries around which spaces were “ours” and which were “theirs.” Saying no was, in some ways, about reinforcing identity.

But even then, I saw food differently. To me, food wasn’t a divider. It was an invitation.

So when I was in Tijuana, I was excited to visit Mercado Hidalgo. If you want to understand a community, go to its food market — the place where everyday life unfolds.

I turned to my tour guide, Ana, and said, “This is wild. This is the grocery store. This is where you shop on the weekend.”She laughed: “Yes! Exactly. This is where you stock up for the week.”

But Mercado Hidalgo was more than that. It was where you met up with friends, where you lingered over a fresh coconut. The line for that coconut wrapped around the block, yet no one seemed bothered. People waited, patient, unhurried, as if leisure was built right into the chore of grocery shopping.

That rhythm struck me as a sharp contrast to Southern California. Back home, weekends at the store are chaotic: a rush to get in, grab what you need, and get out. No pausing to chat, no exchange with the people who actually cultivated the produce. Shopping is transactional. And now, with curbside pickup and grocery apps, we don’t even have to step inside anymore. Efficiency has replaced connection.

In Southern California, the farmers market is our closest equivalent to Mercado Hidalgo — but it isn’t the same thing. Both are spaces where producers meet consumers directly. I remember my first trip to the Santa Monica market — I went home with Harry’s Berries strawberries and a jar of Brothers Products hummus, and I felt like I was buying into something more than groceries; I was buying into a lifestyle.

That’s the key similarity: both are presented as more than transactional. But here’s the difference: at Mercado Hidalgo, this isn’t branding. It’s daily life. In LA, the farmers market becomes a stage where lifestyle and taste are curated, complete with artisanal chocolates, bike valet, and cooking classes. So yes, the farmers market is the closest thing we have — but it’s a translation, not the original.

And with that curation comes cost. Those berries in Santa Monica are stunning, but they’re also expensive. At farmers markets here, beauty itself becomes something you pay for — and not everyone can afford to buy in. You’re paying for that beauty, for the curated experience. I know this firsthand because I once had a beverage stand at a farmers market. All of my ingredients were organic, everything was made by hand — even the almond milk — yet I wrestled with how to price it. Other vendors and I wrestled with what it meant to charge $9 for a 12-ounce drink. My stand eventually didn’t survive, because it didn’t sit right with me to ask that much. I wanted to offer something healthy, delicious, and artisan — but also accessible. That tension between beauty and access is always there.

Mercado Hidalgo. Photo by Jessica Nichole.

In Tijuana, the market felt compact, dense, overflowing. Each stall spilled into the next, tables heavy with fruit, spices, piñatas, tortillas, and beans. The abundance pressed in on you, so that shopping meant brushing shoulders, breathing in the same air, being close. It carried the intimacy of necessity.

By contrast, Los Angeles farmers markets feel curated, almost staged. Aisles are wide, tents neatly arranged, everything spaced to be seen and photographed. Instead of tables overflowing, you get clean baskets of heirloom tomatoes, chalkboard signs, vendors in branded T-shirts. Even the clock tower of the Original Farmers Market feels designed as a landmark, not just a market.

The visual difference reinforces the cultural one: in Tijuana, the market is woven into daily life, compact and communal. In Los Angeles, the market reads more like an event — orderly, stylized, an aesthetic experience. It’s abundance reframed as boutique.

So what’s the point? Is one better? I don’t think so. Southern California farmers markets do offer a beautiful, scenic experience. Many are Instagrammable, and there’s joy in that too — in the aesthetic beauty of baskets of tomatoes, chalkboard signs, live music. Sometimes that curated beauty is what draws people in.

But then I think about who doesn’t have access, and how food gets marketed in ways that exclude. That part feels icky.

When I lived in San Diego, I saw the full spectrum. I’ll never forget the excitement when a market opened in Imperial Beach, just up the street from where I worked. Some coworkers lived in the neighborhood, and on Monday one of them shook her head: “Girl, don’t waste your time. It’s sparse. It’s nothing like Hillcrest or Del Mar.” And she was right. At the time, the Imperial Beach market felt thrown together, like someone had said, “Okay, fine, you want a farmers market? Here you go.”

But what the community wanted wasn’t just a market. They wanted something beautiful, carefully curated, something that brought genuinely fresh produce and artisan goods to a place where the nearest top-tier farmers market was a 30–45 minute drive away.

The Original Farmers Market. Photo by Jessica Nichole.

In San Diego, that’s how we talked about markets: the ones worth carving out time for — Hillcrest on Sundays, Del Mar on Saturdays — and the ones you barely thought about, like the Point Loma market that didn’t survive. And I wonder what that says about us: that we have the abundance and leisure to turn food into something curated and exclusive, and that the beauty of a market becomes just as important as the food itself.

When I think about Mercado Hidalgo, Los Angeles farmers markets, and the spectrum I saw in San Diego, what emerges isn’t a question of which is better. It’s a question of what food markets reveal about us. In Tijuana, the market is necessity woven with community. In Los Angeles, the market becomes leisure, a performance of taste and lifestyle. And in San Diego, you see privilege laid bare: the markets worth driving across town for versus the ones that wither when they don’t deliver beauty, abundance, and curation.

Together, these places remind me that food is never just food. It’s identity, access, and power. It’s who gets beauty and who doesn’t. It’s who gets to linger and who has to rush. Markets tell us what we value, but also who we value. And that’s the part that sticks with me — that in the abundance of Southern California, we’ve turned food into something that can invite or exclude, connect or divide. And now, every time I walk into a market — whether it’s crowded and compact or curated and picturesque — I notice what it’s really telling me about the people it serves, and the ones it leaves out. Every market I walk into now asks the same question: who is this food inviting in, and who is it leaving out?