PANAMA CITY — A new St. Andrews event has been seizing the magic time between the summer heat and the harvest moon with a sunset market on Thursdays.
For the past 13 weeks, St. Andrews Sunset Celebration Market has been jamming along on the marina with local musicians and vendors. An offshoot of the Saturday farmers market in St. Andrews, the sunset market takes place on Thursdays for about four hours as the summer sun sinks beyond the horizon.
“We’re blessed with one of the few west-facing sunsets on the coast,” said John Carbullido, event coordinator for the market. “People don’t have to go to Key West to enjoy it.”
And much like the light at dusk, the time to visit the first year of the sunset market also dwindles.
While the Saturday farmers market boasts an average of 50 vendors from a pool of about 200, the sunset market has a modest 15 to 25 vendors selling a variety of produce and products. Many of them are the same vendors that show up on Saturdays. But the sunset market features items that aren’t the standard fare.
“We also invite manufactured products there,” Carbullido said.
Purveyors can find several items not typical of the Saturday market from locally sewn sports regalia to hand-made porch swings and personalized scarves for the coming autumn.
“Even if they aren’t a farmer, they are still buying and selling locally,” Carbullido added.
The typical market begins about four hours before sunset. Visitors can peruse locally grown produce and crafts, listen to local musicians or rock on the marina’s swings with some local cooking. As dusk draws near, four, resonant, low, groaning notes can be heard being belted out on a conch shell before the sunsets — a tradition brought to the area by the late William L. “Bill” Tant, aka “Cap’n Scuba.”
With only four more Thursdays before the market’s close on Oct. 9, Carbullido has high hopes on the horizon for the sunset market.
“This is the first year but like the farmers market, we hope to be celebrate our 10 year anniversary in the future,” he said.
