This afternoon I went to the West Side Market to order the roasting chickens for Thanksgiving. (No, no turkey for us this year. Neither of us is very fond of it, and chicken tastes better.) I’ve been shopping at the Market regularly (as in several times a month) for over 25 years. What a dispiriting affair it was today. I remember when people used to go there to actually BUY things. Now that Cleveland has been turned into a foodie city, the Market has been turned into a tourist destination. Traffic was backed up to gridlock in the parking lot, which meant circling around ad infinitum. The one Cleveland police officer eventually in sight was shooting the breeze with a vendor inside the market. I eventually gave up and had better luck on a side street south of Lorain Avenue.

I knew that this parking dilemma did not bode well for my shopping experience, so I was not surprised to find the place mobbed with tattooed hipsters with their coffee cups, Beachwood ladies in wildly inappropriate outfits for the West Side Market (Prada, massive jewelry and full make-up are not necessary), suburban people with young children in strollers gawking, stopping dead in their tracks to take photos. As I was leaving, I witnessed the downtown Embassy Suites shuttle van dropping off people. Despite the milling hordes, quite a few of the vendors did not seem to be selling much.

Until quite recently (i.e., until a year or so ago) the West Side Market had a kind of tacky, rundown charm, where poor people mingled with the middle class eastern European ethnic population of Cleveland’s west side, whose families had been patronizing the market for generations. George and I were relative newcomers, shopping there regularly only since 1983. But over time we have built lasting relationships with various of the vendors, whom I have now patronized and recommended to others for decades.

I know I sound like a grumpy old man, and I should be happy for the Market’s success. West 25th Street and the West Side Market are being promoted like crazy by the city and the other businesses on W.25th Street, and the street is no longer the sketchy and relatively dangerous place it once was. (The Jay Hotel and its unsavory cast of characters is long gone. The hookers and most of the drug dealers have moved on.) But over the last year, it has become such a hassle to park and shop at the Market, that it makes me not want to go there. It’s easier to go to Whole Foods. But the experience is not the same. Tourists are transient, and if the Market loses its historical Cleveland character, including its local shoppers, what will it have left? I hope it doesn’t become Disney-esque, like Legacy Village, Crocker Park or other “lifestyle centers.” It won’t be for real shopping by real people.