The neighborhood that I don't live in but that I feel a part of is North Fourth Avenue, the shopping area that includes and overlaps with the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, Kerrytown, and Braun Court. It's part of our weekly routine, full of people that we meet while we're walking down the street every week with a bag or two of groceries.

Getting there

Saturday is the one day a week I very reliably drive to go where I'm going. The challenge of driving in Ann Arbor is the hunt for free, convenient parking, and Fourth Avenue does a good job on winter weekends of providing this. The best parking to be had is the free county lot at Fourth and Catherine, but too many people know about that one to count on getting a space there. Better, and more unknown, is the underground covered lot one block to the south next to the courthouse. Beware of a steep slippery slope on icy days, and know that there's a staircase at the southwest corner of the lot to help you avoid it.

Every once in a while we'll take the bus to market. That's harder to do on weekends than it is on weekdays, since Route 5 only runs hourly. Telling a small child who enjoys riding the bus that they have to hurry to put their boots on in order to make it to the stop on time is one way to cut down travel time.

Once we're in the area, the next challenge is walking. Fortunately, North Fourth is one of the better walkable streets in the area on Saturdays, with plenty of pedestrians on foot and cars that for the most part know when and how to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk. There is one marked mid-block crossing along Catherine Street, but the very common pedestrian mid-block crossing on Fourth between Ann and Catherine is unsigned. Step lively.

Shopping at the winter market

We generally start our shopping by going to the Farmer's Market office and getting a market report from the market manager, Molly Notarianni. My elder son knows Molly from back in the day when she was a barista at Cafe Ambrosia and we were Sunday regulars there. Molly will tell us what's exceptional at the market and which vendors are new, and I've started to grab the weekly market sign-in sheet so I can be sure to learn everyone's name.

The winter market has grown substantially in recent years. There are always apples, donuts, and cider, even in the bitterest of bitter cold days, and we count on that. More often than not there's also fresh eggs, hot coffee, cheeses, cookies, bread, winter greens, potatoes, mushrooms brought down by a family from Alpena, and a selection of meats. We don't get there early enough to be able to choose from everything because some vendors sell completely out.

Hot chocolate, whole milk

After Farmer's Market, there are often a few more errands to do. We'll regularly shop at the People's Food Co-op. We can grab lunch at the neighboring Cafe Verde, talk to the other folks in our world who also shop in the same place every Saturday morning, and make sure that there's enough food in the house to make a Saturday dinner. The announcements board at the Co-op always has some distinctive and entertaining upcoming events that are not generally known.

What used to be there

Every street that you've been to often enough changes year by year in ways that are sometimes worse and sometimes better.

I remember when Wildflour Community Bakery used to be on that street, and when you could pick up a dense, chewy essene roll to gnaw on for sustenance. I also remember Joe Joe's, a cafe at the corner run by Irene and her husband who made fresh juices with an impossibly loud mechanical juicer.

North Fourth Avenue as a whole seems to have weathered change reasonably well. The buildings are in good repair, there's foot traffic year round on weekends, and automobiles and bicycles share the road.

It's a neighborhood I look forward to going there every week, same time, same places, and even though I don't live right there it feels like one of the places I belong that makes Ann Arbor distinctly what it is.

Edward Vielmetti walks around town for AnnArbor.com . You can reach him at 734-330-2465 or at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.