Push Comes to Carts

Reina Pineda has spent the last 10 years making sales from a cart piled high with fresh fruit and spicy snacks that conjure up customers’ memories of Mexico.

Rain or shine, she is at 4th Street and Broadway in Santa Ana, taking coins and crumpled bills in exchange for crunchy chicharrones and sweet raspados. Through summer sun and winter rain, she seeks a bit of shelter by ducking under large umbrellas attached to her stainless-steel pushcart.

But city leaders say Pineda, along with other street vendors who sell their goods downtown, are a constant source of litter and debris.

A frustrated Pineda said, “How can we fight the city? They have made up their minds that they don’t want us here, so we’ll have to go. That’s all there is to it.”

Monday night, the City Council reaffirmed its Aug. 3 decision to banish pushcart vendors from downtown streets. As of Jan. 1, Pineda and the other vendors whose carts stand on every corner of 4th Street from Birch to Bush streets will have to take their carts elsewhere or find another way to make a living.

“We had a lot of broad-based support from the downtown business association to remove the carts from the area. They came to us,” Councilman Brett Franklin said after Monday’s meeting. “Vendors have from now until January to apply for permits to work in another part of the city or find another career.”

The board of the Downtown Santa Ana Business Assn., which represents about 500 businesses, voted 13 to 2 earlier this year to request the removal of the pushcarts.

“It’s unfortunate because these are very hard-working people just trying to make a living, but something had to be done,” said Rueben Martinez, owner of Martinez Books and Art Gallery, just two blocks from 4th Street. “I’m embarrassed by the litter. The sidewalks look awful. The merchants have complained for years because the vendors set up right outside their stores, do their business, make a mess and then leave.”

Vendors argue that they have little control over what customers do with their litter once they buy the food.

“We get complaints that people buy our food and then toss their garbage wherever,” said Jose Salgado, who sells snacks six days a week from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. “And maybe it’s true. Some people will do that, but it isn’t our fault.”

Business was brisk Monday afternoon, with customers ambling up to Salgado’s cart every couple of minutes to buy fruit garnished with lemon, salt and chile powder, or shaved ice to quench their thirst.

Most of the carts that line the street are owned by people other than the vendors, who are paid a small weekly salary, Salgado said.

“What am I going to do if they ban the carts?” Salgado asked as he poured pineapple-flavored syrup onto a mound of shaved ice. “Go out and find a new job, I guess. Maybe I will only have to work five days a week.”

Martinez hopes the ban will be a boon to business in the downtown area, especially 4th Street or Calle Cuatro, as it is called by locals. Spanish is ubiquitous along the brick-paved street lined with travel agencies, bridal shops, jewelers and clothing stores. Banda music and cumbias blare loudly from many of the stores. The vendors and their pushcarts are part of that scene, a little slice of Mexico.

“I feel for these people, but they’re survivors,” Martinez said of the vendors. “They’ll find jobs somewhere else.”

Pineda isn’t so sure.

“I haven’t thought about what will happen after Jan. 1,” she said, nervously smoothing her apron. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Times correspondent Jason Kandel contributed to this report.