Locavorism: The Clock is Ticking

I'm not one to toot my own horn, but . . . well, who am I kidding? I gotta say that those predictions of mine are already coming true. If my Google Analytics stats are to be believed, there's no way I can take credit for helping to reverse the trend, but it's starting to reverse nonetheless.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, once an oasis of local produce for Southern Californians, is turning into a "boutique wholesale operation", with much of the produce being snatched up by commercial distributors and shipped by air to restaurants as far away as New York. And the L.A. chefs who frequent the market are starting to resent it . . .

Over time, I've figured out when to know a trend is living on borrowed time. When the moron sales guys I worked with around 2000 monopolized lunch conversation with how much Cisco stock they just bought . . . it was a good time to get out of the tech stock market (not that I had any stock to sell at that point in my life). When I went to my kid's soccer games and heard non-stop chatter from fellow parents about ARMs and balloon payments and how much their houses had appreciated in 6 months and how they were quitting their jobs as chiropractors to take up real estate (yes, one dad actually did that), I knew the real estate bubble was about to pop.

"Locavorism" (what an annoying word!) has jumped the shark. It just doesn't know it yet.

So what will all those high-status chefs do once Meyer lemons and fingerling potatoes start showing up on Applebee's menus? I smell Crab Louis and Steak Dianne!