When the Downtown Los Altos Farmers' Market opened for the season on April 30, the Los Altos Town Crier printed its closing date as October 15. The date has since changed. The Los Altos Village Association's listing now says the market runs "every Thursday 4-8pm through October 29th." The Pacific Coast Farmers' Market Association's page has a banner that reads "Now Open Through Oct 29th!" Neither organization has said why. The new date still matters more than its size suggests. The two added Thursdays fall in the last two weeks of October, which is when the rest of downtown's fall calendar happens. Under the April schedule, the weekly market would have ended just before downtown's busiest stretch. Now it runs all the way through it.
| Thursday in October | Under the April schedule | Under the current schedule | Same week downtown |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 1 | Market | Market | Season's final month begins |
| October 8 | Market | Market | |
| October 15 | Final market | Market | |
| October 22 | No market | Market | Witches & Warlocks Wine Stroll, Friday the 23rd; HEAD WEST Marketplace, Sunday the 25th |
| October 29 | No market | Final market | A BOO-tiful Downtown Halloween, Friday the 30th |
Where the Thursday market sets up
PCFMA lists the market at 200 State St. The Town Crier's season preview placed it at Third and State. On Thursday evenings, the paper wrote, that intersection "transforms into one of Los Altos' most beloved weekly traditions." The same preview named the vendors who make up the market. P&K Farms draws a line before opening for its Watsonville strawberries. Roli Roti sells porchetta, and Zaida's Kitchen serves Oaxacan food. Brain Foods is new this season, run by the team behind Aurum just down the street. Shindig Home and Garden sells microgreens still on the grow pad.
The market's sponsors show how closely it is tied to the block. LAVA and PCFMA present it, and the sponsors are State Street Market, the Los Altos Mountain View Community Foundation and the City of Los Altos. State Street Market is the food hall at 170 State St., right where the stalls set up. This season it has added a new bar and is waiting on a new café.
The building behind the stalls
Laughing Monk Brewing took over the Murdoch's Bar space inside State Street Market in March, the Mountain View Voice reported. It works as the food hall's bar. It pours nine beers, one cider and two cocktails on tap, and it also serves wine and a short list of made-to-order drinks, including a mezcal Negroni and a black Manhattan. Owner Sam Ghadiri told the Voice that to-go cocktails "are popular during the farmers market downtown." He also gave the reason he picked this site for a Peninsula location: "There's already so much great built-in programming there: trivia, live music. It's such a great walkable downtown too." On Thursdays the bar stays open until 9 p.m., an hour after the market closes. Happy hour runs from 4 to 6 p.m. on weekdays, so it overlaps the market's first two hours.
Coffeebar is coming to the same building but hasn't opened yet. Founder Greg Buchheister told the Town Crier he expected to open "by the end of September." He said construction delays had already pushed the opening from summer to fall. On September 15, the Almanac's roundup of upcoming Peninsula cafés listed it for early October. Both dates are forecasts. Please confirm before you plan a morning around it.
The plan is bigger than one coffee counter. This will be Coffeebar's 11th store and its fourth in the Bay Area. A baking production center near the front, between Third and State, will supply the company's Menlo Park, Sunnyvale and Redwood City stores. There will also be patio seating outside the market. Buchheister compared it to what he saw when the Menlo Park store opened in 2018: "people came out of nowhere, and you could see all these people, and they hadn't seen each other in months or years." If the early-October date holds, State Street will have an all-day café, an evening bar and a Thursday market on the same block during the market's final weeks.
The first Thursday
LAVA has already posted the details for October 1. Gaby Castro is the live music, and the listing marks wine by the glass as "CLOSED" for that night. Laughing Monk's taps and to-go cocktails are a few steps away if you want a drink. If you'd rather have a sit-down dinner after the market, Haru Japanese Restaurant opened May 22 at 325 Main St., in the space Bevri used to occupy. That makes it one of the newest dinner options within a short walk of the stalls.
The week the extension matters most
Under the old schedule, the market would have been gone by the week of October 22. Now that week has four days of downtown events in a row:
- Thursday, October 22. The market's second-to-last night, a Thursday the April schedule didn't include.
- Friday, October 23, 6 to 9 p.m. The Witches & Warlocks Wine Stroll features 16 wineries and eight bands, plus three "Best Dressed" prizes. Byington Vineyard and Winery, McGrail Vineyards & Winery, Vidovich Vineyards and Pelican Ranch Winery of Scotts Valley are on the list. Tastings are hosted by downtown shops such as barre3 Los Altos, BK Collections and Cranberry Scoop. Check-in is at Veterans Community Plaza at Main and State, or at 333 First St. Tickets are sold through Eventbrite.
- Sunday, October 25. HEAD WEST Marketplace sets up on State Street between Second and Fourth streets. This is the last date LAVA lists for the monthly series. The September 27 market ran from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The HEAD WEST stretch of State Street includes the block where the Thursday market sets up. In that one week, the street hosts a market on Thursday, the Wine Stroll on Friday and HEAD WEST on Sunday.
Last market, then Halloween
The market's last night is now Thursday, October 29. A BOO-tiful Downtown Halloween is the next afternoon, Friday, October 30. Trick-or-treating starts at noon. Children go from store to store looking for an orange pumpkin sign in the window, so bring your own treat bag. From 2 to 4 p.m., Veterans Community Plaza has games, a balloon artist and what LAVA calls "Creepy Crafts." Under the original schedule, two weeks would have separated the last market from the Halloween event. Now they fall on back-to-back days.
LAVA's October calendar has no Fall Festival. Downtown's big street festival this year was the Los Altos Arts & Wine Festival, held July 11 and 12 on Main and State. That leaves this October to recurring events on State Street: the Thursday market, the Wine Stroll, HEAD WEST and the Halloween afternoon at the plaza. The farmers market is the only one that happens every week, so extending it keeps the block busy across the whole month.
Further out, the city is still working on a proposed downtown park on one or more of Parking Plazas 1, 2 and 3. It held open houses on September 12 and 17 at the Community Center's Grand Oak Room. The city's own estimate for construction is a conservative four years or more. For this fall, the streets look the way they did last October. The only difference is that the market runs two weeks longer.
Each of these October dates belongs to the downtown around 170 State St., and the season ends with the market on the 29th and Halloween on the 30th. Our family has lived and worked in Los Altos for decades, and we follow these changes closely. If you're thinking about how life near State Street fits your plans, or want to talk about a home a short walk from the Thursday market, The Campi Group would be glad to sit down with you.
