Public Places : Latino Family Experience on Pacific Blvd.

“Pacific Boulevard is the heart and soul of the Southeast community,” says Rosario Marin, one of the first two women to serve on the Huntington Park City Council. “It’s so vibrant. When you walk down Pacific Boulevard, you have a great sense of community.”

On weekends, crowds come to stroll and shop on Pacific Boulevard’s wide sidewalks, past a thriving mix of open-air stores, bridal shops, restaurants and Spanish-language movie theaters. For a half-mile, from Florence Avenue to Randolph Street, the foot traffic rivals Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles.

Huntington Park began as a blue-collar Anglo community in the early 1900s. Today it is 93% Latino.

A key voice in guiding development of Pacific Avenue is JACK WONG. He has served as the city’s director of Community Development since 1987. He is also founder of Ethnopolis, a nonprofit group that studies issues affecting urban ethnic communities:

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Question: When did Pacific Boulevard become a thriving commercial street?

Answer: Pacific Boulevard was one of the main retail streets for Los Angeles County post-World War II. There were department stores, well-known jewelers. We had one of the first auto rows in the county. The last remaining car dealer left just recently.

Everything’s been reoriented because of the construction of freeways.

Q: What caused the shift?

A: As I understand, after the Watts riots a lot of people moved further east, toward Downey and Norwalk. So you had vacant homes, and the people who moved in were Latino families.

Also, in the 1970s and 1980s, major employers in the auto, steel fabrication and tire industry closed. Latino workers found jobs in garment manufacturing and food processing nearby.

With those changes, the retailers changed. Now it’s predominantly a Latino shopping street, though many merchants are Korean and Middle Eastern.

Q: What draws the crowds?

A: It’s a Latino shopping experience, which is mostly a family experience. You go out and do all your shopping for the household in one day: Get a haircut. Buy a dress or jeans. Repair the shoes.

We have sidewalk vending, which adds color and street fair activity. Vending is not [technically] allowed, but people walking the boulevard like to stop for some shaved ice or chicharrones [ fried pork rinds]. There’s a cultural acceptance of selling wares in public spaces, as there is in Asian cultures.

Q: Are there other cultural issues that make Pacific Boulevard unique?

A: Colorful storefronts are particular to Hispanic culture. Also larger stores have been divided into smaller storefronts.

It’s such a valuable street everybody wants street frontage. That’s an economic issue, but I think it’s also cultural in the way [Latino-oriented merchants] market their wares. A lot of times, they get rid of the old display windows and push everything to the sidewalk and it becomes more of an open air mercado feel.

Q: Are there any other ingredients to the boulevard’s success?

A: Our free off-street parking lots have been very beneficial, as has our excellent regional bus system. According to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, up to 40,000 people travel up and down Pacific Boulevard each day on buses, which is as many as the Blue Line.

Of great long-term importance is that we changed our plan for downtown to encourage construction of a lot of housing within walking distance of schools, shopping and buses. This will bring even more pedestrian activity to the boulevard day and night.

Public Places columnist Jane Spiller welcomes suggestions for places that are publicly accessible and free. Contact her c/o Voices or via E-mail: spillers@news.latimes.com