THE HOLIDAYS : Sidewalk Sale : Street Vendors Offer Relief From Crowded Malls, but the Merchandise May Be Suspect

It was all very hush-hush. The man had merchandise to move. Strictly cash. No sales tax. No receipt.

“Marilyn, and James Dean, are the most popular,” he said, pointing to several framed portraits of movie stars that were among the dozens of posters he had propped up along a Chatsworth street corner.

Business was brisk on a Sunday afternoon at the start of the holiday shopping season as people drove up to pay $6 per poster. They bought celebrity shots, landscape photographs and fanciful drawings of unicorns. The man in charge, who was retired and ran his business out of a beat-up van, kept an eye out for black-and-white patrol cars.

“I already got caught once in North Hollywood,” he said, not wanting to give his name. “They gave me a warning. The next time I get caught it’s going to cost me a lot of money.”

So it is with these weekend desperadoes, these renegade pushers of inexpensive tidbits who deal from sidewalks throughout the San Fernando Valley. Such al fresco hucksterism is illegal in Los Angeles County, but you can spot these vendors hiding in plain sight, peddling toys from a vacant lot or ungainly pastel lamps from the edge of a gas station. They drape drab Persian rugs over a chain-link fence at a construction site.

For harried Christmas shoppers, the temptation can be great.

“Total convenience,” said Betty Muus of Canoga Park, who stopped at the Chatsworth corner to purchase a James Dean and a cat poster for her daughter. “There was no hassle parking and I hate going into malls.”

Prices are low, too. “They don’t have any overhead, right?” said Maria Shannon, who found herself perusing goods on a Reseda street one recent Saturday.

Beware, though. The quality is often suspect and buyers must usually endure the vendor’s full attention.

“These have real glass and real metal frames,” Darrell Morrison, another poster salesman, told a prospective customer at the corner of Victory Boulevard and DeSoto Avenue in Woodland Hills. “This one here,” he pointed to a large gray and black abstract, “retails for $250, but I’ll give it to you for $75.”

He lifted the poster from a fence and pointed to the piece of wire, fixed to the back of the frame, from which it hung.

“The strap is adjustable,” he said.

In 45 minutes, the 19-year-old salesman sold about $400 worth of posters this way. On a good day, he said, he’ll sell 40 posters ranging in price from $30 to $400.

“I tried a regular sales job, but I got doors slammed in my face and a water hose squirted at me,” the Florida native said. “Then I tried this. If you know where to set up, you can sell anything. It’s a natural high.”

It’s also something of a risk. Street sellers can be fined hundreds of dollars for violating municipal codes. But, truth be told, police usually turn the other cheek.

“We generally look at the individual as a guy who’s out there trying to make a buck and at least he’s not selling dope,” said Officer John Smith, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman. “Often, he’s told to move along.”

They don’t need to be told more than once.

Torribio Olivera, 21, who sells colorful flags for $12 each, circulates among a number of East Valley sites. Like other vendors, he says he buys his goods from a wholesale warehouse and stores them in his car so he can stay on the move. Vendors are careful not to set up shop close to established businesses or residences that may resent their presence and call the police.

So they choose out-of-the-way lots and niches, corners of industrial complexes or even city parks. One vendor sold $75 teddy bears beneath a gas station sign in Valley Village.

Most of them do this for pocket money, nothing more, because sidewalk sales are not much of a career. The only time vendors can turn a profit is on weekends, when prospective buyers are on the streets. Torribio says he sells less than a dozen flags a day.

“This is like a side job,” said Eddie Lopez, a construction worker who was selling toys on the edge of Lanark Park in Canoga Park on a blustery Friday afternoon. “But I need the extra money to earn a living.”

A plastic ray gun cost $12. A talking doll was slightly more. Children’s shirts, skirts and pants listed for between $5 and $20. But after several hours on the street, Lopez had sold only three items.

The slow economy isn’t just affecting department stores. The Arabic woman who pushed $95 rugs along Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills just shook her head as she complained through an interpreter.

“She says it is very bad and she doesn’t sell anything,” the man relayed.

Like most vendors, she was eagerly flexible about her prices. But when a couple strolled by and heard her starting offer, they didn’t try to haggle. They simply walked away.

“Only about half of them barter,” Morrison said. “It’s the American way, right?”

Even at his young age, Morrison is one the local pros when it comes to street sales. Instead of buying from a warehouse, he gets a better price from a retail store that funnels some of its inventory to him. Each poster brings at least a $10 profit, he said, even after haggling.

“You’ve got to know where to go to buy the pictures,” he said. “And you’ve got to know where to go to sell them. You’ve got to be able to set up fast and sell fast.”

Location is everything. Vendors want lots of traffic and sunny days. “The clouds kill you,” one of them said. This is a game of impulse.

“What made me stop?” said Doug Cyr, 29, of Northridge who bought the $75 abstract from Morrison. “I was in the right mood for buying and I saw these posters here.”

Such is the fickle nature of the sidewalk business. But setting up on the street, by yourself, is arguably better than competing with the horde that sells similar wares at swap meets throughout the city.

A young man who gave his name only as Shamish sat with a dozen rugs on a Reseda corner. Droves of holiday shoppers rode past and he hadn’t made a single sale. But he wasn’t about to give up.

“I’ve got no job, so I sit here,” he said, in halting English. “It’s better than nothing, you know?”