I met Sara Kaufman in September 2023 when she visited the 32nd Street Farmers Market for the first time as part of her first-year orientation at Johns Hopkins University. She was with two students in her orientation group, Prisha and Yuna. They each made a Story Seed for themselves and then made a collaborative seed to add to the bulletin board to commemorate their first trip to the Farmers Market. During her winter break, Sara met me at Bird in Hand, a cafe within walking distance of the Hopkins Homewood campus where Sara lives, to reflect on that first day at the market, her first semester of college, and her different experiences of finding community in Argentina, Florida, and Baltimore. Below is a compressed version of our conversation.
SARA: I actually have a story with my Story Seed if you want to hear it. I got back to my dorm [after visiting the 32nd Street Farmers Market] and I went to hang it up and had I lost it. I was really upset because that was a little hallmark of my first time at the Farmers Market. I was looking for it, couldn't find it, and moved on. I came back from class one day and I took a different route home. It was on the ground as I was walking back to my dorm. It disappeared and then reappeared, which was kind of magical.
MEGAN: I was so heart warmed when I saw you at the Farmers Market because there was a farmers market in my college town and that was a huge part of my college experience. I went almost every Saturday because my college was up on a hill and the farmers market was right downtown. You literally just walked down the hill and you were in the farmers market. I still keep in touch with one of the farmers there. So I love that the 32nd Street Farmers Market is an early memory for you.
Can you go back to that first trip to the 32nd Street Farmers Market? Are there any details that stand out for you, or feelings or images?
SARA: It was the first week of college so everything was still incredibly new and overwhelmingly exciting. I was just eager to get out and start exploring and start doing things. I went [to the Market] with my orientation group so it was organized in that sense. We all walked over together and I'm like “Oh my gosh, I’m in Baltimore.” When everybody moves to Baltimore they freak out because, “Oh my gosh, the crime.” I'm still getting over that.
The market reminded me of growing up in Argentina. There was a little craft fair right down the street from my house. We would go there on the weekends and check out all the crafts. It's really nice seeing that artisanal grassroots community.
MEGAN: I think when you're in a new place, that sense of familiarity is so important. Having the memory of my college farmers market… When I moved to Baltimore, knowing that there was a farmers market right down the street, that played a part of where I decided to move. I was like, “Oh I can walk to the farmers market from my house. This is a community that I can find here.” Wherever I move to next, I need to have a farmers market close by. That’s where I know I can...It's like a container for community building. It's a gathering space. It gives you a place to go.
SARA: I love that third space where you're not expected to…you can just kind of go and exist. After moving from a big city in Argentina I went to a suburb in Florida and there wasn't really much of that there. It was harder to meet people outside of school or those organized locations as a result.
MEGAN: You’re the second person who I’ve talked to that has mentioned the market as being a place where you can just go and be. But I haven’t heard that term “third space” before.
SARA: I'm not sure what the first and second spaces are, but from what I've gathered and from what I've seen, you can just go and be there. You're not expected to spend money. You're not expected to do anything in that place except enjoy the moment and I really like that concept.*
MEGAN: I love that. One of my friends actually is intimidated by farmers markets because she feels like she's obligated to buy something. She wants to engage but feels badly about going up to a vendor if she doesn't buy something. Do you ever feel that?
SARA: I mean a little bit. As a college student without a kitchen I don't exactly have the financial means or the use for a lot of the products that they sell there. But I like going just for the atmosphere and to see all the colors, all the vibrancy, all the people talking and engaging.
MEGAN: As a college student, what do you think is the value of having a market close by? What does that add to your college experience?
SARA: Having that anchor point is really nice, especially at Hopkins. It's a very academic-based, intense school and having outside venues to go and live and exist outside of a classroom or lecture hall is really useful. Just enjoying, taking a deep breath and stopping the grind.
MEGAN: How was the first semester workload?
SARA: About as easy as you can imagine. It was a lot of memorization and getting stuff done, turning in the next thing, going from there. I really enjoy writing poetry but I didn't have quite as much time as I would have liked to because of the constant work. It’s been nice to break in the middle of it. Going into last semester I didn't know anyone at Hopkins. I was completely on my own. New place, new everything. Now I have my Hopkins family, or Baltimore family, that I'm relying on, which I really appreciate that.
MEGAN: Who's in your Hopkins and Baltimore family?
SARA: Largely, I'm holding onto Hillel on campus. Everyone meets each other once a week at least, if not more. And then outside of that my roommates, my friends. We really bonded over our love of baking and our struggles doing so in a little kitchen. I attempted two birthday cakes. One was a normal cake and the other one was a cheesecake. It didn't go too well. The first time when I was trying to make a cake, the kitchen started gradually filling up with students because someone just happened to be hosting a dinner party. It was really fun but there wasn't a lot of space to make them. And then the second time, we were trying to figure out where to get the ingredients and our local university market doesn't have all the supplies that we would need. We ended up taking an egg from the dining hall. It’s fun. It’s just a completely different lifestyle than I’m used to back home.
MEGAN: What was the environment that you grew up in back home?
SARA: I moved from the capital city in Argentina to a suburb in Florida, and that was really interesting, seeing the shift from South America. It's a very warm culture [in South America]. People meet up for coffee and spend hours and hours talking, hugs and love, things like that. Then I got to Florida and I was living across the street from a field of cows. Not quite the same situation.
I remember one of the big things that people would point out [in Florida] was that I liked to hug. I would hug people when I said “hi” and I said “bye.” That was weird to my classmates because that's not normal here. I had to kind of retrain social cues to not do that.
And then language was also a big deal for me. I could speak three languages. But I got here [in America] and stopped using my Spanish as often so I lost a lot of my accent. Pretty much every Spanish country has their own accent and Argentina specifically has a very strong cadence to their words. Getting here at first, I was recognized as Argentinian immediately by the way I spoke. When I go back [to Argentina] and visit now, I'll start speaking Spanish and get asked, “Where are you from? You have an American accent.”
MEGAN: How have you tried to stay in touch with your home culture?
SARA: Lots of music. I have my Argentinian playlist. Food is also a big thing, not so much here in college because of the whole dining situation. But I try to keep in touch with those foods.
MEGAN: What are some of the foods that remind you of home?
SARA: Definitely empanadas. Dulce de leche. Argentina specifically is very Italian, so lots of pastas. [The Italian language] is where they get their cadence from.
MEGAN: Where did that influence come from? What’s that history?
SARA: There was a lot of immigration that took place. I know at least my family immigrated [to Argentina] in the 1940s.
MEGAN: It's really interesting how different cultures merge.
SARA: I think that's another beautiful thing about the Farmers Market, where you can get that mishmash of everyone coming from different places in the world telling their stories and sharing them.
MEGAN: How do you think that other students can become more aware of the 32nd Street Farmers Market as a resource?
SARA: I really love that Hopkins had it as part of our orientation. It encourages us to go and get to know it. I think that more promotion [beyond orientation] would help. There's a saying about the ‘Hopkins Bubble.’ A lot of students don't go off campus because everything is right there. But getting out and exploring past that is where a lot of the shaping comes from. A lot of who you become and what you know comes from outside of a bubble.
I met some people from Baltimore, and they called it Smalltimore. Hearing that was good because it went against so much of what I was warned about, living here, about the crime and the dangers and how you don't want to get off campus because it could be dangerous. Getting out and seeing the people who chose to move here, spend time here, and see it as a home has been really nice. I hope that in the next few years I can continue getting outside of campus and become integrated more with that Smalltimore.
*Since our conversation, I learned that sociologist Dr. Ray Oldenburg coined the term "third place" in his book, The Great Good Place. He explains, "third places (after home, first, and workplace, second)...are informal public gathering places" (xvii). They are 'homes away from home' where unreleated people relate" (ix). I've been reading the second edition of his book and about the different characteristics of a third place, and I now see those characterstics reflected in all of the stories that patrons and vendors of the 32nd Street Farmers Market have shared with me. In Sara's story, she touches on the characteristics of a third place being a "mixer" of different people, and being a neutral space where "people may come and go just when they please and are beholden to no one" (Oldenburg xviii). More of Dr. Oldenburg's research will be incorporated into my forthcoming book inspired by the 32nd Street Farmers Market, title TBD.
Interested in reading Dr. Oldenburg's book? Rather than buying it on Amazon, see if your local bookstore can order a copy for you! The most recent edition was published in 2023 with a foreward by Karen Christensen that contextualizes third places within the crises of climate change, loneliness, and political polarization.
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