Business and Charity at a Crossroads : A Pantry Feeds the Bodies and Souls of the Down and Out, but Merchants in the Area Say They Are Paying the Price

The merchants say the drug addicts, the alcoholics and the homeless who eat at the Christian food pantry in San Pedro are driving away their business.

Those who frequent the pantry--they include the poor and families who rely on four free meals a week to eke out an existence--say the storefront operation, known simply as The Crossing, is the only thing standing between them and starvation.

The Crossing’s 300-400 volunteers say they are only doing God’s work by feeding the bodies and souls of the needy.

The clash in viewpoints between the merchants and those who are served by and work at The Crossing has sparked a polite but determined struggle over its future.

The merchants have contacted Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores and are enlisting her help in having a city nuisance ordinance enforced against The Crossing so that, if necessary, they can force it from its Pacific Avenue location.

The Crossing, which provides prayer services and one meal a day from Thursday to Sunday, had planned to move into the old Burrito Factory building just six blocks away at Pacific and 19th Street. But residents and merchants in that area don’t want it there either. Many merchants say The Crossing simply does not belong anywhere in downtown San Pedro.

Established seven years ago, The Crossing is a nonprofit organization run by volunteers that serves between 300-400 people weekly. Funded entirely by private donations, it has been at the Pacific and 13th Street location for 2 1/2 years, and its relationship with neighboring merchants has never been a happy one.

It is a slightly seedy area that is trying to rebound from the recession. Pawn shops, bars and vacant buildings dot the strip, mixing with long-established businesses struggling to stay open.

Last Saturday, the anxiety among volunteers and diners at The Crossing was palpable. They had heard about a meeting planned for Monday by a neighborhood watch association in which a petition to close The Crossing would be given to a representative of Flores’ office.

Volunteer Ed Kise worked behind the counter in an area next to The Crossing’s main dining room, handing out loaves of bread. Kise, who works at the County Department of Childrens Services, has been a volunteer at The Crossing for seven years.

Over the years, he said he has seen a tremendous change in the street people. When they know they will be fed, he said, they are less hostile toward others.

“There is also less of an anger or hostility toward hearing the Gospel, and an openness to recognize their sinfulness in their own lives,” he said, stopping to dole out bread.

Kise does not talk about “fighting” the merchants. He hopes and prays that things will work out.

The next day, Sunday, is special at The Crossing. Wooden crosses adorn the top of each table and hymnals are stacked at the bottom. And the meals are particularly good because restaurants down at the Ports O’ Call donated food they did not serve at brunch. It is shortly before 3 p.m. and about 50 people are in the waiting room.

Staff volunteer Charles Adams, 41, sits at a table a moment before the diners are allowed into the dining room. Adams, like most of the other patrons and volunteers, has heard the rumor that neighbors want to close The Crossing.

“I used to be one of these people on the street strung out on drugs, with alcohol, with nothing to eat,” said Adams, a 20-year resident of San Pedro. “One day I was hungry and people told me about The Crossing. Now I get my enjoyment out of helping people, of bringing them to the Lord.”

Being hungry is being desperate, Adams said. He remembers. To him and others, the threat to the food pantry’s stability has allowed the once-banished specter of desperation to slither inside the door.

In The Crossing’s main room, the diners have finished their prayers and hymns. Aluminum pans of food are wheeled in on carts and the crowd cheers. The foil covers are removed to reveal a feast: scrambled eggs and sausage, waffles, eggs Benedict, bagels bursting with lox, French toast, blintzes, blueberry and cherry tarts. Brunch the Sunday before, Mothers’ Day, featured cracked crab.

Tom, 61, sits at the end of one table, guarding his 8-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter while they eat. He hates coming to The Crossing and declines to give his last name.

An unemployed garment cutter from New York City, he said he plans to take his children to Mexico after school is out.

“I tell my kids don’t pay no attention to all this. Look at them,” he said, raking the room with a sneer. “These people, they sleep in the park, making babies in the park. It’s disgusting!

“Why don’t they go to New York or the Midwest where there’s work? The bunch of drunks!” he said.

The man at the table in front of Tom whips around.

“I overheard what he said and I’m not here to argue, but there’s a lot of us who come here to get enough to live,” the man said. “My name’s Jesse Parker and I’m a Vietnam-era vet. I’m not trash. I’m not a nobody.”

Monday night in a back room at tiny Las Asambleas church on 12th Street, members of the neighborhood watch group are preparing for their meeting. They are fed up with crime in the area, with the drugs, with the bars that serve alcoholics who then pass out on their property. But most of all, they are fed up with The Crossing.

“I got this thing started with some other people after I got broken into for the fourth time,” said Ralph Weaver, a San Pedro carpenter, referring to the neighborhood organization. “After four times, a man can get just a little angry.”

Weaver does not directly blame The Crossing for the crimes on his property, but said the food pantry attracts people he considers suspect.

Soft-spoken Pat Saller also is angry.

“The problem is that now the street people are hooking up with gangs, and the police are not able to distinguish between them,” said Saller, who owns the American Tattoo shop. Tattoos run in a steady swirl down his arms, to his wrists.

“In the beginning of the month they get the money to feed their habit. Then the end of the month comes and they don’t have the money but they still have the habit,” Saller said. “And when they have no money is when they go to The Crossing. As long at that Crossing is there, that element is going to be there.”

Saller and Weaver were the first to arrive at the meeting, which typically draws about 10 people. But The Crossing had rallied its patrons to come, much to the surprise of the neighborhood watch group.

So at 7 p.m., poor and homeless people, merchants and religious volunteers squeezed into the room. Against the wall, a rumpled blond man clutched a well-worn Bible and muttered. In a chair, a matronly woman held her car stereo in her lap and pursed her lips.

Jim Frlekin of Slavko’s Harbor Poultry sought to calm everyone. The neighborhood watch is not trying to close The Crossing. The group just wants it to move, he said.

“We have to do something about The Crossing,” said Frlekin, chairman of the neighborhood association. “But we have to work with the people there. We’re not doing this to hurt anybody, but we don’t want to be hurt either.”

Ted Nelson, treasurer of the nonprofit board that oversees The Crossing, told the association he understood their fears and that he did not think they were either unfeeling or irrational. The Crossing would see if it could move into the gymnasium of the Harbor View House, a home for mentally handicapped people located in the northwest tip of San Pedro, near the water and away from downtown, he said.

The neighborhood association had proposed a Port of Los Angeles-owned building, but everyone liked the idea of Harbor View House too.

“We had no idea that there was a lot of turmoil about this,” Nelson said. “But we want to work with you and work with the community to solve these problems,” he said.

Flores’ representative at the meeting, Mario Juravitch, said he would investigate both options for the group and return with an answer at the next monthly meeting.

The meeting could have ended in 20 minutes. But many stayed for another hour and a half to make sure their point was understood.

The Pacific Avenue merchants, who find hypodermic needles and feces on their property and confront prostitutes and drug dealers, wanted the poor and homeless to know that they are not bad people. They are compassionate people. But they are losing customers and their ability to make a living. If things get any worse they will become desperate.

The poor and homeless people wanted to stress to the merchants that they, too, are not evil people. They are down on their luck. Some are single mothers, others are men laid off from work. Many once were well-off--they owned homes and earned college degrees, and yes, alcohol and drugs have claimed many. The Crossing is the only barrier between them and physical and spiritual starvation.

Without it, they too will be desperate.