To Market: Zuccotti Park

It's as easy to find a kebab at the Zuccotti Park greenmarket as it is Japanese turnips, sour cherries and (hurrah for summer!) multi-color sweet corn.

This downtown market, at Broadway and Cedar St., meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from late April through December, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., which seems perfectly suited to the crowds passing through the park — a loose term, really, for a welcome collection of stone benches and thin trees amidst much sky scraper insanity and Ground Zero dust.

On a humid afternoon that threatened thunderstorms but had yet to deliver, there were tourists with fanny packs, suited business men buying single apples, and interested locals poking around for dinner options. Plus, it must be said, wide open aisles for browsing and not a single baby-bicycle-bounding-retriever trio in sight. (What is wrong with you, Park Slopers?! You get to bring one enormous accessory to a crowded market. ONE!)






























It was a petite market, with only three greenmarket vendors. The Migliorelli Farm had brought roots-out piles of root vegetables, lettuces, diminutive zucchinis, stocky cucumbers, green beans, shelling peas, and sweet corn; Red Jacket Orchards featured double-wide boxes of cherries, strawberries, apricots, apples, fruit juices, and then some; and finally there was Meredith's Bread, which must surely do a swift morning business with its muffins, cookies, pies, and breads.

And lined up alongside them were a halal gyro truck, a hotdog cart, a kabab stand, a Nuts for Nuts cart and other forkless-lunch vendors. Which made for quite the diverse lineup, but one that — within earshot of the new Trade Centers rising, and steps from the Trinity church, with its shady graveyard and Sept. 11 sculptural memorial — felt perfectly New York, and perfectly right.