John Silveira had no idea his time as an air traffic controller with the U.S. Navy was preparing him to become director of the Riverside Arts Market (RAM), but just like directing and guiding all those radar blips to take off and land safely, a successful day at RAM was all about managing several moving parts to ensure a safe and enjoyable day beneath the Fuller Warren Bridge.
“I love puzzles,” Silveira said. “RAM is certainly a moving puzzle in the morning but also a puzzle all during the week because you’re really building what the market is going to look like next Saturday with the challenge of keeping it fresh, keeping it new, keeping it exciting…”
Silveira’s life has taken him from the New England coast to Florida’s Gold Coast — Hollywood, more specifically — to the Golden Coast of San Francisco Bay to the First Coast of St. Augustine with many other stops along the way.
At 20 years old, Silveira enlisted with the U.S. Navy and worked in aviation, first as an aviation ordinanceman before being assigned to a VF-2 fighter squadron. He completed two Western Pacific tours on the aircraft carrier USS Ranger.
“[Working on] the flight deck of an aircraft carrier is probably the most exciting thing that I’ve ever done in my life,” Silveira said. “Just all of that hustle bustle.”
Following that, Silveira became and served as an air traffic controller for six years before retiring after nearly a decade of military service. Silveira said it was his work in air traffic controlled that really primed him to work with markets.
“Markets are very, very similar,” he said. “A lot of moving parts…You have to develop a strategy to deal with all those moving parts to be safe.”
When they were ready for a slower-paced lifestyle, with semi-retirement on the horizon, Silveira and his wife, Vicky, began discussing the idea of moving back to Florida. The discussion went on for a couple years: Silveira said Vicky, his California girl through and through, would only consider leaving California on one condition: She got to pick where they’d live.
Silveira agreed and she picked St. Augustine and, in 2015, they made the move. But slowing down would not be in the cards for Silveira.
Suffering from a little culture shock in the transition from west to east coast living, Silveira went about exploring the Riverside area a couple days before interviewing for the RAM position and discovered the now-closed Southern Roots Filling Station on King Street. It was in that coffee shop that he began to feel his own roots begin to settle as he felt an atmosphere he recognized.
“The door kind of closed abruptly behind me and made this slapping noise and I just felt like I was in a time transporter that brought me back to a coffee shop on Telegraph Avenue in Berkley,” Silveira said. “..I kind of felt like I was back home in the San Francisco Bay Area.”
Silveira accepted the director position at RAM and for the next eight years, he would lead the market and help it continue its evolution into the community mainstay event its become over its 15 years. It was under Silveira’s leadership that RAM was able to fully and officially incorporate food trucks into the market.
“That was a big thing, adding some of those culinary artists to the market to be able to tell their stories,” Silveira said.
Earlier this year, Silveira decided it was time to step down as director and can now visit RAM as a shopper rather than a director. Passing on all the responsibility of director to his successor, Chloe Kuhn, was a weight he never really noticed until it was gone.
“I felt the responsibility for everyone’s safety — the vendors, the customers that came in, everybody,” he said.
While he had long ago recognized how special a place and event RAM was to the Riverside community, now he can appreciate it through a different lens without worrying about keeping all those puzzle pieces aligning throughout the day.
“It’s just awesome to see it and to see people that love it,” Silveira said. “You know, that’s the fun part.”
