Bargain Hunters Hit City’s Streets : Commerce: Merchants do brisk business on the first weekend of sanctioned garage sales in Santa Ana. The next of such events won’t be until December.

You could almost hear the money changing hands at the corner of Shelton Street and McFadden Avenue.

An old exercise machine goes for $40. Cha-ching!

A battered kitchen stove goes for $15. A new mother carts off a baby’s changing table for $10. And 2-year-old Jorge Rodriguez walks away with a sparkle in his eye and a slightly battered red fire engine, well worth the $1.50 his mother laid out.

On the first weekend of city-sanctioned garage sales, Santa Ana residents on many streets and boulevards were hawking and hunting bargains on items ranging from toilet plungers to prom shoes.

While business was indeed brisk, the new city garage sale ordinance, which restricts sales to four weekends a year, wasn’t popular with household merchants who complained that government had once again found a way to put its collective nose where it didn’t belong.

“It’s just so damned inconvenient,” said one man who identified himself only as Tran. “If I decide I want to clean out my garage, I should be able to sell the junk whenever I want. It’s silly.”

Said another driveway merchant about the elected officials: “They ought to shoot all them. According to their law, if grandma dies tomorrow, I can’t sell her stuff on Monday. It’s unconstitutional.”

The campaign to restrict the sales grew out of other residents’ complaints that the yard sales had become unsightly junkfests that were actually small businesses operating regularly out of driveways, lawns and parking lots.

As a result, the City Council in May approved the ordinance restricting sales to the first weekend of the month in March, June, September and December.

“It was really an issue of aesthetics,” said Joe Vielma, a Riverview West Neighborhood Assn. member who supported the new code. “People were leaving a lot of trash and junk after the sales and the area was looking very cluttered. Since the city began enforcing the law, things have improved.”

Santa Ana Police Sgt. Ken Ice said Saturday that before the passage of the ordinance people complained that sales were taking place virtually every day.

“People were upset because there were clothes piled on front lawns,” Ice said. “There was a lot of noise and congestion on the streets.”

Saturday there was heavy traffic on sidewalks and streets, but Ice said there had been no disturbances or complaints to police.

One of the larger crowds gathered on Juan Escobedo’s front lawn at Shelton Street and McFadden Avenue, where multicolored signs were tacked to telephone polls and street signs directed customers to garage sales throughout the neighborhood.

From the Escobedo family’s white fence, blouses and slacks of all sizes hung neatly, catching an occasional early-morning breeze. Children’s clothing was displayed on the grass, as were toys and a variety of household tools and knickknacks, including a book titled “Who’s Who of Beverly Hills 90210.”

“The ordinance doesn’t really hurt us,” Escobedo said. “We do it just because we have a lot of junk we want to get rid of.”

But with the new law, he said, “what’s happened is that everybody ends up having theirs the same day. I don’t think there is anybody at the mall today.”

Escobedo said he opened his front gate for business at 7 a.m. Two hours later there was a steady stream of customers picking through clothes, all priced to sell.

“You can buy a blouse here for 50 cents, but at the store it’s going to be several dollars,” said Maria Rodriguez, who gave her son the fire engine. “He really loves the toy.”

Across the street, Maria Lopez was displaying her clothing on tree branches and in stacks piled along the driveway.

“I think the city was concerned that some people were trying to sell things for high prices,” Lopez said. “We don’t do that. People who come here probably don’t have enough money to go to the stores. Most people are looking for clothes for work or for the children. I think these sales really help the poor people.”

Wearing a black money belt, Lopez’s helper, 11-year-old Adrianna Barrera, said she had planned to cut the price on her collection of three Barbie dolls so that one little customer could afford a new toy.

“Some kids really don’t have the money,” Adrianna said. “I’m trying to make some money so that I can buy my brother some new tennis shoes for his birthday.”

And there is money to be made too.

Tran, whose sale items included framed posters of professional basketball and football teams for $10, work boots for $7, surfboards for $10 and the popular Power Ranger figures, priced at $5 each, said he had done pretty well by late Saturday morning, even though his sale was competing with neighbors on both sides.

“It’s like a shopping center out here. Everybody’s doing it.”