Down the way, bright hand-painted signs offer: Juices. Pears. Heidi's Herbs and Preserves. Sushi. Hangi. There is the never ending line of hot coffee Havoc addicts.
"Live for the land" is painted in green on a piece of muslin cloth with an array of plants spilling out into the walkway; a lady in a rainbow jumper setting them all around and about.
A man in a wheelchair with a full face ta moko singing. Rogue children over there hopping on and over the bollards of Moorings, the sculpture my grandad installed last year. He told me: each bollard represents one of the tributaries that flow in and out of the river. These characters at this marketplace are like tributaries, little streams that flow in from their different perspectives and contribute to and become included in the flow of this place.
Mother and daughter Jill and Jacqui share a stall that offers mini potted fuchsia and small batch blended teas. Jill, taught at Wanganui High School for 22 years while raising her family and now she is happily retired and tending to her flower pots.
I sampled a kawakawa and cardamon drop from Jacqui's loveheart logo'd Libertine Blends tea range. It was warming and reviving - much like Jacqui, who also holds a stall at the Hill Street Farmers market in Wellington.
"I love meeting people who are interested and doing things." Jacqui is now a mother herself and always checks out the Baby Originals stall for practical, conscious and stylish threads for baby.
"You can always tell which ones are the Wanganui babies in Wellington because they'll be wearing baby originals."
Jenny, of Baby Originals, makes all the clothing herself mainly working with merino and organic cotton - you can't get made-with-love quality and prices like these in the capital.
The Split Enz book Stranger than Fiction stuck out in neon cover at Sally's stall. Formerly a librarian, she sits in her white Toyota Corolla reading a Lee Childs novel. Her book stall is a full-time operation and she hunts all week at auctions for books, "especially New Zealand books and obscure fiction".
Rewana breads are a river family tradition usually made from an old family bug that has been passed on. Derived from a potato yeast, some of them have been alive as long as 80 years. Families of the river have grown up on the bread and kept the bug alive collecting the wild yeast in the air.
Gerald mans the stall for his friend on the weekends: "Hardly anybody makes it any more." The markets are his Saturday tradition "I just like seeing lots of different people," and he usually picks up a couple of CDs down the way.
Christopher Cape is a recent transplant from Christchurch. Mr Cape has a radio voice, baritone manner and a sincere moustache. He has been proudly self-employed his entire life in various careers and today he makes chunky painted wooden toys and sells to kindies "from Whangarei to Oamaru".
His range includes cars, planes, trains, whares and waka and recently he has added Waimarie to his repertoire. They've been so popular he can hardly keep up with demand - "Wood brings us closer to nature, and you can fix them easily."
He enjoys seeing the different people with their dogs. "I've been toying with the idea of putting up a modest sized notice saying: 'Dog stop. For cool cats and hot dogs'."
Michael and Jerry are at the REBS (River Exchange Barter System) stall offering locally grown produce. Michael explained to me that REBS is a local economy of not only dollars but skills and "other things people enjoy giving".
Though there is a locally created currency between members to keep score of trading, called "river dollars", it is part of a nationwide network of similar "green dollar" trading systems. The system promotes co-operation and caring rather than competition.
Says Michael: "I've just got a bit of a garden at home. I like the people and trading and I can sell my lemons here, or vegetables or whatever I've got. A lot of people come down to socialise."
Jerry brings the bulk of it from his orchards. He noted the Green Party stall also has REBS. "It's a complementary currency because people don't always have the skills to be able to trade and get a job. So, by offering what you can do, you can then trade the services that other people do. Might be able to make jams or something, they can then trade that. It's not person to person, it's person to group."
Most weeks Michael will get a croissant from the Green Party stall at a 50/50 trade. Angela was making a posy of roses and baby's breath while Roger chatted to the customers. The couple are from Wanganui and, having lived all over the country, have returned home.
Without any prior rose-growing or gardening expertise, they bought the business as a nice way to retire and maintain an income while taking on a new hobby. They never imagined how the rose and the gift of roses could touch so many peoples lives.
"We've gotten to know so many people's families through the roses, and they've become a part of ours too." Angela reckons they watched "one too many TV shows about people buying vineyards" and the romantic notion of having a lifestyle in growing roses took hold.
Roger said it's quite fitting that they are in the business of roses, given that his grandfather was the Dempsey half of Dempsey and Forrest, funeral directors.
"One time I pointed out a bunch that had a particularly nice fragrance and the lady looked at me and said: 'They're going to the cemetery, dear'."
Back at the pizza stall, I'm slicing salami and talking to Kirk and Yasmine about the ins and outs of pizza business. Carting down an oven and firewood and boxes of cheese and salami and rolling dough exposed in the elements.
Yasmine works: head down, flour-dusted apron, focused. Kirk is on the oven, he is a sculptor and has lived and travelled all over the world, landing in Wanganui. He uses the income from selling his pizza at the markets to fund his art.
"It's the best job I've ever had, minimal hours, and the only thing I've had to worry about is occasional inclement weather." The market is extensive and diverse for a small city and the types of people exhibiting wares are just as diverse in life story and experience. I don't think I could fully encapsulate the experience, so I can only offer a montage of impressions.
The market has been the place that has cemented my deep appreciation and enthusiasm for Wanganui. It is its own little world. There's no poshness here - it's familial, encouraging, gumboots and sneakers ... even the mayor has a stall with the best oat cookies I've ever had.