Blight’s Firm Grasp : Despair and Hope Battle Daily on South Broadway

LeRoy Simon is one of those philosophers who doubles as a barber. For 32 years now he’s worked the insides and outsides of people’s heads at his shop on South Broadway--long enough to remember when the street didn’t suffer so much from blight, poverty and crime; long enough to develop a rich skepticism for slick-talking politicians and plate-passing preachers who’ve come and gone or, worse, stayed.

But for all that, Simon, 61, seems to believe that this section of South-Central may yet be redeemed. On a wall of his shop hangs a sign declaring, simply, “Business is good.”

“You come in crying that things are bad, then it’s going to be bad. When I walk in”--he grins and gestures to the handmade poster--”business is good. And it has been, for the last 30-some years. It’s all attitude.”

He pauses, losing the grin. “But you really hear some sad stories, man.”

Positive thinking has its limits on South Broadway, a forlorn, riot-scarred stretch of Los Angeles where people are wondering whether, this time, something better really couldemerge from the anger and ashes, or, like last time, things will only get worse.

Here, miles removed from the bustle of Chinatown and the Spanish-speaking markets downtown, Broadway is an eroded commercial strip where burned-out shells of mini-malls and swap meet emporiums share sidewalks with check-cashing offices, thrift shops, and storefront churches.

Long before the rioting erupted April 29, Cat’s Liquor was outfitted with protective plexiglass walls to shield clerks, cash registers and booze from their less-respectable clientele, and Mrs. K’s Exclusive Apparel kept its door locked during business hours, requiring customers to knock.

Here, along a two-mile stretch where Broadway intersects Florence and Manchester avenues, people who have witnessed decades of decline cast dubious glances toward City Hall, Rebuild L.A. and other major players in the campaign to heal Los Angeles. The latest plans for urban renewal in this neighborhood started in 1985, but have thus far produced more research papers than tangible results. Many residents and business people here say they’ll believe it when they see it.

“They want Crenshaw as a showplace, so they’re going to put more emphasis there,” predicts Dr. James Mays, a general practitioner with an office south of Manchester, near Simon’s barber shop. “This is going to be the last neighborhood rehabilitated--if it is.”

From his new barbecue stand near Florence, Robert Smith offers a similar view: “Administrators get hired and they come out and ride around in air-conditioned cars, but . . . the money never gets here.” Trying to prove the skeptics wrong is City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. The councilman, elected last year to succeed Robert Farrell as steward of the troubled 8th District, speaks confidently of negotiations that would bring a new, major supermarket to the corner of Broadway and Manchester as a start of commercial improvements. Various grocers are said to be considering the venture.

“It’s an uphill climb, but I think there’s great reason for hope,” Ridley-Thomas says. The riots, he adds, “provided a certain impetus to do something about it.”

Rebuilding Broadway, many suggest, is a greater challenge than improving the more affluent Crenshaw district. Both areas have citizens groups organized to help plan renewal efforts. But while the Rebuild Crenshaw panel was formed as a direct response to recent riots, the efforts of Broadway/Manchester Revitalization date back several years.

Dr. James Beasley, an optometrist on Manchester, is chairman of a 21-member citizens committee formed in 1990 to work with city officials. He also served on a planning panel formed in 1985.

Beasley, who is 61 and has worked in the neighborhood for more than 30 years, points to such modest structures as a new McDonald’s and new mini-mall near his office, both of which survived the rioting, as signs of hope. The envisioned supermarket, he says, will be required to hire people within the neighborhood for middle management, cashier and stock clerk positions. Creating jobs for local people is a top priority of the renewal plans.

The dream is to enable the Broadway/Manchester axis to return to its blue-collar prime of 30 years ago. Old-timers remember when there were pharmacies, a supermarket, cinemas, sit-down restaurants and a bowling alley.

Everything changed after Watts went up in flames in 1965. Looters struck Broadway, triggering an exodus of chain stores. Red-lining by banks and insurance companies hampered recovery as more and more people became ensnared by urban ills--unemployment, the welfare cycle, drug abuse, crime. In July and August, despite a truce between various gang factions, Los Angeles police counted nine gang-related homicides in the area.

Not far from Dr. Mays’ office is a symbol of malignant neglect--the boarded-up, graffiti-scarred hulk of what used to be Broadway Community Hospital. The 56-bed institution was shut down in 1982 after state officials judged it “a threat to the public health.” Its closure represented another blow to the local economy; now the property is an eyesore.

Further complicating matters are ethnic changes. As some of the better-off black families left the decaying neighborhood, Latino immigrants increasingly took their places. The two groups, residents and merchants say, tend to go their separate ways, often suspicious of each other. The business community also includes Korean merchants--many of whom were burned out during the riots and have not returned--and Anglos, some who do business in the area and some who are landlords.

One short stretch near Florence, next door to the ruins of a mini-mall, exemplifies the ethnic mix of mom-and-pop merchants: Cat’s Liquor Store, which is owned by a Korean family; Family Furniture, one of two stores operated by a couple who emigrated from Mexico, and California Check Cashing, run by a black family.

From his check-cashing window, Jerry Tucker could see trouble brewing. “Those people that used to bring in payroll checks were bringing in unemployment checks,” he says. Some have since gone on general relief--and stayed there. The riots put still more people out of work.

Cat’s was looted and vandalized during the riots. The liquor store, rolling with the punches, now sells baseball caps bearing the slogan “No Justice, No Peace.” At Family Furniture, Angel and Hermenia Munoz were without adequate insurance coverage and absorbed major losses from looters. Now they slash prices of furniture displayed on the sidewalk in hopes of drumming up business.

The one thing that isn’t for sale, Hermenia says, is a crucifix that hangs in a corner of the store. “He helps me. He helps me all the time,” she explains.

The block also features one of the first new enterprises to open since the flames were put out--Robert Smith’s barbecue stand.

“I just came out the last night of the riots and I couldn’t find anyplace to eat . . . so I decided I’d cook it myself,” Smith explains. “And while I was out here, I decided I’d sell it.”

Smith says he hasn’t bothered with permits yet, but business has been going well enough to have him dreaming of “The Sidewalk Barbecue” outlets dotting Los Angeles and beyond. “It’s not that hard. Can’t be that hard,” he says.

Such can-do spirit, many say, seems increasingly scarce in a place where faith and despair are in constant battle. But earthly struggles may have inspired a proliferation of churches. The Church of God Pentecostal started as a storefront operation and in 1987 completed a structure at 74th Street that seats 350.

Even here, faith seems to be losing ground. Since the riots, Pastor W. J. Young says, the typical Sunday attendance at has dropped from about 200 to 125. Apparently, Young explains, fewer black families living outside the neighborhood are willing to drive in for services--even though the church has hired security guards to watch over worshipers’ cars.

“I feel really bad about it,” Young says. “I feel sometimes, as a pastor, like . . . what am I doing wrong? I try to be a good pastor, good administrator, good steward. We have a hard time keeping our doors open.”

Young, like the barber and the barbecue man, would rather think positively. He looks at his run-down neighborhood and dreams of “an old folks’ home” rising on the property across the street--a handsome, safe structure close to places to shop, eat, worship. At this stage, he says, it’s not so much a plan as “a vision.”