L.A. Grand Central Market--a Place to Sample City’s Flavor

There is no better place to taste the flavor of Los Angeles than from Bill Dolgenow’s downtown deli counter.

For 57 years, Dolgenow has stood there and experienced it all: The bureaucratic turkeys with their various urban renewal schemes. The political hams looking for votes at election time. The personal beefs burdening the guy on the street.

Dolgenow’s deli has operated since 1935 in the middle of Grand Central Market, the open-air food bazaar that today celebrates its 75th anniversary as a downtown landmark.

The occasion will be marked with speeches from the city’s crop of politicians and the introduction of the venerable market’s newest tenants. They are a juice bar owned by a television comedian and a tortilleria run by a group of former gang members.

Why not, says Dolgenow, 87. If nothing else, the Grand Central Market has learned over the years to go with the flow. It’s a survivor.

“Two world wars, the Depression, earthquakes and riots. This market just keeps on going,” Dolgenow said.

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Located on Broadway and Hill Street between 3rd and 4th streets, the market opened in 1917 to serve residents of elegant mansions that lined the city’s wealthy Bunker Hill. Matrons shopped with butlers in tow to carry their purchases back up the hill on the Angel’s Flight funicular.

The market adapted when the rich moved out and the huge homes were converted into boardinghouses. It hung on when the freeways were built, Bunker Hill residences were leveled and supermarkets followed Angelenos into the suburbs.

And it kept its huge rolling doors open when the downtown businessmen pulled up stakes and moved into the new high-rise core.

And when it comes time to be seen in Los Angeles, Grand Central, with its rich ethnic mix, has long been the place for the ultimate photo op.

Dolgenow remembers visits by Richard M. Nixon, John and Robert Kennedy, Pat and Jerry Brown and Pete Wilson.

“They come to press the flesh,” Dolgenow was quoted as saying after Wilson dropped in two years ago. “Angelenos come to press the fish.”

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Customers are discouraged from squeezing the tomatoes and plums. Most Grand Central Market shoppers have a feel for freshness, though.

“That’s why we come here. The fresh produce,” said Alicia Tzul as she carefully fingered the bananas at one of the market’s 12 produce stands.

Tzul travels from Koreatown twice a month with her husband and two daughters to stock up on fruits, vegetables, cheese and dry spices. It’s worth the trip, she said. The place is clean--200 pounds of sawdust is spread on the floors nightly--and prices are low.

“We pass by lots of supermarkets to come here,” said Lilia Garcia, who lives near the Coliseum in South-Central Los Angeles and travels to the downtown market once a week with her husband. “Our parents came here, too,” Garcia said.

Most of the 15,000 or so shoppers who visit the market each day are Latino. But market operators say Korean, Armenian, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Arabic, Jordanian, Yiddish and Portuguese are spoken along with English and Spanish.

The same international flavor extends to the market’s bins and shelves. Beans from El Salvador. Japanese chili peppers. Arborio rice from Italy. Some meat cases are piled with pigs’ heads--eyes, snouts and all. Others hold virtually a complete cow: Beef brains for $2.29 a pound, beef lips for $1.29, beef cheeks for $1.99, beef hearts, beef marrow guts, beef kidneys, beef liver.

On weekdays, secretaries from downtown offices can be seen hurrying from the market carrying plastic bags of fruit and vegetables. Lawyers from Bunker Hill high-rises share lunch counter space with welfare recipients from Skid Row voucher hotels.

“The first time I came here I thought this was the most incredible place I’d ever seen,” said Lani Sinkwan, a college foundation administrator who has made occasional trips to the market from Mission Viejo for 10 years. “It’s like a European market.”

There certainly isn’t anything like it in Mission Viejo, she said.

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“Look over here.”

Ira Yellin is pointing out the roll-up doors facing Hill Street and the gleaming high-rise apartment and office buildings in the distance. Pivoting, he points in the other direction toward the Broadway doors and Los Angeles’ turn-of-the-century “historic core” district outside.

Grand Central Market, which he purchased for $5.5 million seven years ago, is a real-life link between Los Angeles’ past and present, Yellin said.

A lawyer-turned-developer with a penchant for urban preservation, Yellin is gradually spending another $10 million to renovate and expand the market.

Parking is being increased. The building, circa 1897, has been seismically improved and a suburban-style grocery store is being planned for the market’s basement. Skylights painted over during World War II have been restored and stalls are being built.

“It keeps evolving,” Yellin said. Which explains the two stalls that will be introduced during tonight’s anniversary celebration.

One is the juice bar owned by comedian Flip Wilson, who has been a market customer for 40 years.

The other is Homeboy Tortillas, an eatery to be operated by youths from the Aliso-Pico neighborhood on the Eastside. Profits from the tortilleria are expected to be reinvested in an inner-city youth program called Jobs for a Future, Grand Central Market officials said.