Market Watch: Atwater Village market's local tomato grower, Cameron Slocum

Cameron Slocum pulls up to the Atwater Village farmers market in the Tomatomobile, a 1980s Volvo station wagon with crude icons of tomatoes, blue on the right side, pink on the left, scrawled everywhere including the windows, along with a plug for "The Eastside Tomato King.com." He whips out a high-design Italian chair and a few handfuls of carrots, radishes and beets, which he displays on a table covered with trippy spirals. "Dad approaches everything like a visual arts project," says his daughter and assistant, Lina, 19. "Last year when he sold at farmers markets it was more a performance piece than anything else."

By David Karp, Special to the Los Angeles Times

September 10, 2010