Missing the Bus : Transportation: In former Greyhound terminal, stores suffer and street hustlers have disappeared since the firm relocated.

Bad things happen when you miss the bus.

Ask the merchants and street hustlers in downtown Los Angeles who for years earned a living by serving travelers at the Greyhound Lines terminal at 6th and Los Angeles streets.

They were left behind last month when the bus company opened a new station in an industrial area near 7th and Alameda streets south of downtown.

Although the 23-year-old terminal could be a scary place for travelers, who found themselves stepping off buses and onto the edge of Skid Row, it was a lucrative place for some people.

Greyhound shared the terminal building with scores of independent vendors, competing cabbies and a ragtag corps of panhandlers and street people who toted luggage and offered to sell “protection” to frightened travelers.

“When you walked off that bus, it was like walking into a movie set with the cameras rolling,” remembers Jerry LaFayette, a former drug addict who hauled bags and hailed cabs for arriving passengers for four years. “You’ve heard of ‘New Jack City?’ This was it. People were lying in wait.”

Besides carrying luggage, LaFayette washed car windshields and counseled travelers on ways to avoid the $24 cab trip to Los Angeles International Airport. His advice: Let him escort them a few blocks to a spot where they could catch the RTD’s No. 42 bus for $1.10.

Inside the nearly block-square terminal, retailers such as Ahia Aboe-Arthur did a brisk business selling “Los Angeles” T-shirts, snacks and other items to the 5,000 travelers who passed through the bus station each day.

About 85 shops and partitioned stalls lined the sprawling terminal’s street level. In the center was a moving ramp that carried travelers to the second-floor waiting rooms, ticket counters and bus loading areas.

These days, the ramp is boarded up. The aisles between the shops are empty. So is the sidewalk outside the sprawling terminal building--although confused travelers still occasionally show up expecting to catch a bus. For now, Greyhound is supplying shuttle buses to carry them to the new terminal.

Merchants tick off their losses like bus dispatchers calling out departure times.

“Business is down 25%,” said Yunsung Park, owner of a 4-year-old imported gift and jewelry shop in the terminal.

“Almost 50% down,” said Suh Soo, manager of a children’s clothing store across the aisle from Park.

“A little over 60% off,” said Eboe-Arthur, who sells imported African clothing as well as T-shirts.

“Almost 100% off,” moaned Kwi Kim, who since 1972 has sold jeans, boots and leather jackets in a Western wear shop next to the former bus station entrance. “It hurts. We have a long lease that we’re trying to cancel.”

Joseph Fatirian, proprietor of a sportswear store inside the terminal, hopes to do the same with the lease he negotiated 10 months ago. He is worried about losing the $8,000 security deposit he paid when he moved in if he bails out, however.

“It’s like standing in quicksand,” Fatirian said. “I’m lucky to sell maybe $80 or $100 of merchandise a day. My rent is $1,000 a month, not including electricity and insurance.”

The owners of the terminal building are not in a lease-shredding mood, however.

That’s because Greyhound received bankruptcy court permission to tear up its own lease--a $90,000-a-month pact that was scheduled to run through 1995. It was renewable through the year 2005, said Kathleen Wedgewood, manager of Samko General Partnership, owner of the building.

The bus station rent was negotiated when Samko purchased the building from Greyhound for $12 million in 1986, during one of the bus company’s earlier belt-tightening periods.

“We knew Greyhound was in bankruptcy. But we were just as surprised as anybody that they could get out of their long-term lease,” she said.

These days, about 35 of the building’s shop spaces remain occupied, according to Wedgewood. Her company is considering remodeling the first floor and seeking a zone change that would allow a garment manufacturer to move in. It is looking for a tenant in the transportation business to take over the old bus ramps on the second floor, she said.

In the meantime, it has put the building up for sale. The asking price is $25 million, according to Jeff Luster, a broker with Major Properties in Los Angeles.

Wedgewood said Greyhound’s departure had one beneficial effect, however. Street people and panhandlers who hung out at the terminal have also disappeared.

“I used to be petrified every day when I came here,” she said. “Now we can walk safely around our building.”

Terminal shoeshine stand operator Larry Norris agreed. “There’s less problems now with transients hassling customers. They can sit down and relax,” said Norris, who has applied spit shines near the bus station entrance since 1971.

Trouble is, there aren’t that many customers. Norris said he has watched one neighbor after another close. “A clothing store they had in the front is gone. The store that used to sell pictures behind me is gone. The doughnut stand and Chinese restaurant over there are gone.”

Downtown apartment resident Clarence O’Dell also said he misses the buses, the travelers and even the panhandlers.

“They certainly took something from the neighborhood when Greyhound moved,” said O’Dell, a retired animal kennel worker. “I liked it when it was more lively around here. There was more energy here with all the foot traffic.”

Travelers who inadvertently wander into the old station can’t believe it was once a busy--and sometimes dangerous--place.

When Danish tourists Dot Kroun and Janni Kidgaard plopped their backpacks on the sidewalk to wait for a shuttle-bus ride to the new station near 7th and Alameda streets south of downtown, the only person in sight was a bored security guard hired by Samko.

Greyhound operates the new terminal’s cafeteria, gift shop, newsstand and waiting room game arcade. It even controls taxi operations through an exclusive contract with Bell Cabs. Entrance to the fenced-in station is restricted to travelers and those dropping them off or picking them up.

‘We’re pretty happy,” said Enzo Orlando, area general manager for Greyhound.

Former 6th Street baggage hustler LaFayette isn’t.

“The old bus station is a ghost town now,” said LaFayette, a resident of a downtown rehabilitation center who pocketed an average of $60 each day in tips.

“I’m out of business now.”