Sunny Side of a Street Called Olvera

When we were teen-agers, Marshall Wilkinson, Bob Owen and I rode the Sunset Boulevard double-deck bus downtown to Olvera Street on New Year’s Eve. The bus only came out as far as Fairfax Avenue, and then Sunset became a two-lane blacktop road, edged by eucalyptus trees.

Somebody’s mother drove us as far as Fairfax to get the bus. I don’t remember how we got home from Fairfax, but we certainly didn’t walk clear to Beverly Hills. Probably someone’s father picked us up because it was well after midnight. We felt sophisticated and languidly world-weary, which is not too easy when you’re a sturdy, 4-foot, 11-inch 14-year-old girl.

Marshall and Bob and I sauntered up and down the block-long street and tried everything. Marshall had given me a tiny bottle of Worth Dans Le Nuit perfume in a round blue bottle, deep sapphire color, for my Christmas Eve birthday.

On Olvera Street, the boys bought me a pair of wonderful earrings, beads hanging from tiny silver chains and as round and blue as the perfume bottle. They swung from my ears almost to my shoulders, glamorous and, of course, ridiculous.

We had our caricatures done and the artist must have had a fine sense of humor. He gave me circles under my eyes that would have made Tallulah Bankhead envious. I had no more circles than Shirley Temple, and I loved it. The boys, who were being Cary Grant and Franchot Tone, told me it was a wonderful likeness.

I have loved Olvera Street ever since, and have taken visiting friends from all over the world to see this Mexican street and to eat at La Golondrina restaurant or maybe one of the street stalls.

Years later, as a dragooned suburban room mother, I accompanied a fourth-grade class to Olvera Street. There were supposed to be three other mothers and the teacher. It is unnecessary to tell you that only one other mother showed up. I realized while we were all having lunch at one of the sidewalk shops that I was quite alone with the entire class, several of whom had lost or already spent their lunch money.

I was yelling commands and handing out money when I looked across the walk, and at a quiet table with flowers in a basket at La Golondrina, there were the second mother and the male teacher, sipping large margaritas with their foreheads almost touching. Dear girl.

I took the class to the Avila Adobe where Christine Sterling once lived. She is the wonderful and visionary lady who restored Olvera Street in the early ‘30s. I gave my marvelous commentary on the richness of our Mexican heritage and the fact that Billy the Kid once had hidden out from a posse in the Avila house and closed with a ringing tribute to the early Californians. Then I said, “And now, boys and girls, does anyone want to ask me a question?”

A cherubic little boy said, “Mrs. Thompson, where do we buy the itching powder?”

After that weeklong day and the train trip home, I did have circles under my eyes Tallulah would have envied. It was still a great day.

I have spent several Election Days there when I have been handling the campaign media. On Election Day, things are at the point where if you ain’t done it, it ain’t going to get done, so the only thing you can do is hide and have a lovely day. No one ever thinks to look on Olvera Street for a press staffer.

Now, the Olvera Street Merchants Assn. has paid for a plan to refurbish the old street, make a new entrance at the north end, make all of the paving in the plaza and on the street and its approaches of authentic cobblestones and Mexican tile, add to the parking and complete the sprucing up of shops and restaurants. More than half the shops and eating places are still presided over by the families who started 57 years ago when Christine Sterling first turned on the old fountain.

Vivienne De Bonza, whose grandmother, Consuelo, started La Golondrina, runs it with an easy hand. Once a week, she is at the flower market at 4:30 in the morning to buy bouquets for the tables. She is a beautiful young woman who is now president of the Olvera Street Merchants Assn.

“We want it to be the city’s living room,” she said when we had lunch the other day with Robin Kramer, a senior staff member of Councilman Richard Alatorre,

Olvera Street is in Alatorre’s district at his special request. By the end of the year, the enchanting miniature Mexican village will be an entity of the city. Previously, it has been city, county and state, thus becoming nobody’s baby. If the merchants’ plans come true--and they will, given the determination of delightful Vivienne and Councilman Alatorre--it will be a place you and your friends and visitors can enjoy as if you were in a Latin American city, with interesting shops full of authentic marvels to window shop and to buy. There will be dancers, mariachis, musicians, street fairs, flower stands and a foamy margarita when you can decently slip away from the fourth-graders.

I can’t wait. Of course, I love it now. (Uh, what do you bet it’ll be too grand for itching powder? By the way, the kid never found it and I wouldn’t have lent him the money if he had.)

I’ll see you at the blessing of the animals on Holy Saturday. Get your goat and come on down. Call the Los Angeles Plaza Church for the exact time during Easter week. Peaches, Mrs. Goldfarb and I will be looking for you.