Walking into Royal Palms on March 29th felt less like a grocery run and more like a Sunday afternoon at a Floridian social club that happened to have better produce. The Wicker Park Farmers Market wrapped its winter season here, and honestly, the pairing of artisanal goat cheese with a backdrop of turquoise shuffleboard courts is the kind of aesthetic irony I live for.

The energy was high for the finale. You had vendors tucked between the courts, selling everything from storage-crop apples to microgreens, while people sipped tropical mocktails and waited for their turn to grab a "biscuit" (that's shuffleboard talk for the puck, not the breakfast kind—though I wouldn't have hated a biscuit stand).

What I love about the market being here is how it bridges the gap. You see families with strollers navigating the bar-adjacent space alongside the usual Wicker Park creatives. It keeps the neighborhood from feeling like a series of closed-off silos. It’s communal.

After the market wind-down, I ducked out of the tropical heat and walked over to Myopic Books to cool off in the stacks. There’s something about the transition from the bright, loud energy of Royal Palms to the silent, dust-flecked aisles of a legendary bookstore that perfectly captures the duality of this neighborhood.

I finished the day at Signal Records., checking out some local art. It’s a reminder that even as Wicker Park gets shinier, the people making the "noise" are still here, just shifting from the indoor courts back to the park as the frost finally breaks.