Street Vendors Pick Up Slack After Riots

On a freshly bulldozed earthen lot in South Los Angeles where a bank once circulated thousands of dollars every week, Lawrence James sets up a table of trinkets each day to make money by the fistful.

Hovering behind a row of paintings of Malcolm X and a card table spilling over with cheap umbrellas, lamps and radios, James is among a hardy new breed of vendors proliferating onvacant city street corners where the April riots burned out scores of businesses.

“All kind of people out here these days,” said James, who parks his gray van near his merchandise for quick getaways from nosy cops. “Soon as a good corner gets cleared, you got to claim it fast. There’s lots of people cruising around looking to beat you to the punch.”

As riot-ravaged lots are cleared of rubble and left untended, they are becoming temporary havens to street businesses that are sprouting like frail vegetation in fire-blackened forests.

On lots checkered throughout South Los Angeles are T-shirt stands and watermelon trucks, toy vendors and barbecue chefs--all hustling their wares without encumbrance by rent or city licensing requirements.

In Koreatown and the Pico-Union district, where property owners have generally moved more quickly than their South Los Angeles counterparts to cordon vacant lots with concertina wire and cyclone fences, enterprising hustlers are turning the barriers into crude billboards, hanging signs advertising handymen, rap concerts and car body work.

“Electrician--$15 Per Hour!” trumpets one sign. Scrawled on another: “Professional Autobody Work. All Quoats Under $125!”

These streetwise entrepreneurs are well aware that their slapdash style of capitalism amid the ruins will not last long. They know that sooner or later they will be sent packing by police, earthmoving equipment or angry homeowner and merchant groups.

“Street vending’s always been a concern because legitimate business people are not happy about competing with people who don’t pay rent and licensing fees,” said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Teresa Tatreau, who has fielded numerous complaints about street vending in the department’s 77th Street police division in South Los Angeles. “I’m not sure this city wants to conduct its business in an open-air marketplace.”

Street vending without a license is illegal under the city’s municipal code--punishable by a maximum of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Earlier this year, the City Council approved a measure that would allow the city to set up special vending districts.

Councilman Michael Woo--who pushed for another provision to allow vending citywide, but was rebuffed by the council--says the new surge in street sales is “a clear sign that the city will have to legitimize and regulate street vendors at some point.”

For the time being, though, with police preoccupied with more serious crimes and most landowners ensnared in the paperwork and financial logistics of rebuilding, Los Angeles’ vacant lots belong to the swift.

“With all the tension going on, there are much more important matters for us to deal with right now,” Tatreau said. “And we respond to what residents and businessmen complain about. Right now, this isn’t high on people’s lists.”

Every day last week, Lawrence James hustled to be the first vendor to lay claim to a dirt-caked lot in the 5700 block of South Vermont Avenue, just north of Slauson Avenue. A squat, gray-haired man who hides his eyes behind wraparound sunglasses, James arrives about 7 a.m. each day, lining up framed posters of civil rights leaders and floral scenes. His table is strewn with inexpensive trinkets--paintings of Jesus, statues of kissing lovers, a plastic telephone, a box of watches, miniature domino games.

On his best day, James says he can clear $50. “Better this than hanging out at filling stations with my hand out for quarters,” he said.

Until a week ago, James was plying his wares from a lot at Avalon and El Segundo boulevards. But he was rousted one afternoon by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, and after driving aimlessly for several hours, noticed the empty lot on Vermont Avenue.

The Home Savings bank that once occupied the site had been left a burned-out shell by the riots that swept the area. A Home Savings official who asked not to be identified said the company had bulldozed the ruins of the old bank and plans to rebuild on the site.

“If anybody’s there now, I can’t imagine they’ll be there for long,” she said.

Many of the post-riot vendors seem to prefer working alone, afraid that too many of their kind gathering on a single lot will bring the police.

“That was the problem on El Segundo,” James said. “I had all these fruit dealers and every time the cops saw them, they made a beeline for us.”

But there are others who like working in numbers. At Vermont and Century Boulevard, at least four vendors set up shop each day on a rock-strewn lot that once housed a fried chicken franchise, where they sell oranges, T-shirts, watermelons and barbecued chicken.

Steve Hancock, the T-shirt man, has been on the corner for three weeks, since the bulldozers cleared away crushed concrete and twisted metal. Each morning he erects a cloth canopy and lines a folding table with African print clothing, gang truce shirts and X--for Malcolm X--caps. Two nearby bus shelters provide many of his customers, who wander over to pass the time inspecting his wares.

His stand is an offshoot of another vending operation based on Imperial Highway. Hancock said he was hired to set up the new stand because the owner anticipated a surge in demand for goods after the riots.

“People down here ain’t going to swap meets anymore,” Hancock said. “We don’t throw change back in your face. We don’t follow you around the store. You come here, you can take your time, browse. And if you don’t like what I got, cool.”

On a 90-degree day last week, Lilly Woods paused during a stroll along Avalon and Manchester boulevards to look over several room fans put out on the corner by vendor Jose Reyes.

Normally, Woods would have driven over from her Watts home to a department store to find a fan. But with so many stores burned out, she said, street vendors are picking up the slack.

There was some language trouble at first between vendor and customer. “Does this give mucho air or poquito air?” Woods wanted to know, pointing to one fan. Reyes shrugged.

She finally decided not to buy the fan--at least for the moment.

“You have to be careful of the things you buy on the street,” she said. “But it’s nice these people are here. It’s a real convenience.”