Of Carts and Corners : ...

Maria Del Carmine Perez chases the American dream with dolls.

“We want to prosper,” the 15-year-old says earnestly, gesturing toward her family’s enterprise--a cart stacked with brightly dressed, hoop-skirted, lace-trimmed dolls that echo a romantic time far removed from gritty 1992 Los Angeles.

Over the past year the tantalizing lure of prosperity has carried Perez and the doll cart from the Pico-Union area, where she first began selling dolls, to the southeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Carondelet Street, a block from MacArthur Park.

“It’s a little better neighborhood,” she explains, standing in the shadow of high-rise buildings disgorging lunch crowds of chattering insurance and telephone company workers.

While it may not be El Dorado, the intersection where Perez works is a magnet for street vendors. The teen-ager is sandwiched between a woman broiling bacon-wrapped knackwurst on a portable grill and another deftly carving up fruits and vegetables to sell by the slice. Across the street, a man and woman operating from a pickup truck cater to the lunch crowd with an array of snacks and drinks.

In the microeconomy of street vending, Perez’s dolls in red and yellow dresses are an eye-catching standout. But because they are not staples like food, business is a roller coaster.

“Sometimes I sell, like, five dolls, that makes $60. Sometimes, I make $100. Some days I don’t make anything,” she says. “We’re doing OK.” Christmas, she adds with a smile, was a high point with about 150 dolls sold.

Perez also is proud that some of the dolls were purchased as gifts bound for distant places. “These dolls have gone to North Carolina, New York and Guatemala,” she says.

Still, Perez admits, she and her family haven’t struck it rich selling dolls mostly priced at $20 each.

For one thing, customers sometimes want to haggle. “If they ask for $12, I ask for $13,” she says. At other times, customers take one look and decide the dolls don’t meet their aesthetic standards. “They’re pretty, but sometimes people don’t like them,” Perez says in a puzzled, wistful tone.

And, Perez notes, there’s more to the doll business than just hanging out on the street. Since coming to this country from Mexico two years ago, Perez says, she has become an expert at sewing the dolls’ dresses; her mother adds the lace and imitation-pearl trimmings. The ninth-grader says she turns saleswoman during vacations from year-round school. It is her contribution to the support of an eight-member family that, besides her parents, includes two brothers and three sisters.

The apparent normality of the scene on Wilshire Boulevard belies the controversy that has surrounded street vending in Los Angeles. But Perez says the fact that selling on the street is illegal is never far from her thoughts. For that reason, she attended a recent City Council meeting where a compromise legalization plan was tentatively approved. The City Attorney is working out details of the ordinance that would establish permits for sellers and designated vending districts.

“They’re doing something for us,” she says. “They have to legalize this because we don’t have other work. We have to work at this.”

At the hot dog stand next to Perez, Imelda Bidrio, who works for the stand’s owner, agrees that necessity is the mother of street vending. But after two weeks of forking onions and squeezing mustard onto hot dog buns, Bidrio is ready for something else.

“If I can find a job, I will go,” she says, citing the possibility of arrest as a fringe benefit she can do without.

Perez and Bidrio apparently are among the luckier vendors when it comes to confrontations with authority. Both say they have never been arrested for vending, but police have told them to pack up and move on. “They say, ‘You can’t be here, you have to go away,’ ” Perez says.

This particular day, the police seem to have other concerns. A patrol car is parked across from Perez, but she says the cops have paid no attention to her or the other vendors.

Nonetheless, legalization removes the threat of arrest, a constant source of stress, says Perez. According to the most recent figures, arrests for street vending nearly doubled--to 2,700--from 1989 to 1990. Penalties range up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

On the flip side, Perez says vending is a safe occupation. She has never been robbed or otherwise victimized.

Yet not much later a sad, homely drama of the city streets unfolds on Perez’s corner. A woman who identifies herself only as Juana walks up to the three vendors, holding out a bus pass bearing the picture of an older man. She is searching for her memory-impaired uncle, 72, who disappeared in the neighborhood three weeks ago.

“I put my uncle in the motel and he went for a walk and he didn’t come back,” Juana says.

No one recognizes the man in the photograph.