Little Italy Mercato Farmers' Market

This guide to the Little Italy Mercato Farmers' Market in San Diego traces back to 2008, when Catt Fields-White noticed a neighborhood full of wine bars but nowhere to buy a tomato and started staking out stalls along West Date Street. It follows how that first Saturday grew into a market so large that nobody, not even its own organizers, can agree on how many vendors show up from one week to the next. You'll hear the competing counts and what stays constant despite them: six city blocks of stalls stretching toward the waterfront. Go early, before the crowd thickens near the water.