If the Auction Shtick Is a Little Sappy, Blame It on the Trees
A worker pulled a tightly bundled Christmas tree from the truckload of straight-from-Oregon firs, slashed the twine that bound it, slammed it on the stage to open its boughs, then spun it around for the audience to review.
This candidate was tall, dark and handsome, but a bit scrawny compared with its bushier predecessors.
“We call this one the space-saver,” sang out auctioneer Dennis Cornelson. “You don’t have to move the couch or the end tables.” The few dozen prospective owners chuckled.
“Who’s going to give me $22?” Cornelson cajoled.
No takers.
“You guys are mean; you guys are cruel,” Cornelson said. “If you were that Christmas tree, you’d feel terrible. Not everybody can have a big tree.” A pregnant pause ensued, then a man tentatively raised his hand. “Sold,” Cornelson proclaimed. “You saved my life.”
The Christmas tree auction in central Los Angeles may be the only such auction left in the land. But for several thousand regulars, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without having to bid on their holiday centerpiece. Starting about three weeks before Christmas, tree seekers descend on the Alameda Street lot to wait for the perfect tree at the perfect price.
It’s a sylvan EBay, with a mix of Barnum & Bailey and a bargain basement. Never mind the industrial surroundings and the din of nearby freeway traffic. Once you step onto the lot, holiday spirit soars. The magnificent smell of freshly cut evergreens perfumes the air. Red-and-white striped canopies and poles evoke candy canes. Little children perch on parents’ shoulders for a better view -- or to aid in their families’ bidding.
It’s that rare place in Los Angeles where people from every race and economic strata stand shoulder to shoulder engaged in the same pursuit, as they make spirited bids and laugh together at auctioneer Cornelson’s corny repartee.
“If you’ve come here for a used car, you’re in the wrong place.... We sell Christmas trees,” Cornelson chanted as he started back from a break Thursday night. “You can buy a Christmas tree today or you can come back tomorrow. If for some reason you don’t buy one tomorrow, you can come back the next day.... You can spend your life at a Christmas tree auction.”
When Candace and Joe Erling outlasted rivals and scored their perfect tree -- a gorgeous 8-foot grand fir for $48, Cornelson called out from the stage to the Covina couple, “You left and came back?”
Candace Erling shot back: “We went to dinner.”
“You went for a few martinis, did you say?” Cornelson replied. “Ah, drunken Christmas tree bidding.” He recognized the Erlings, regulars at the auction since 1987, when their now-grown children were young.
Cornelson asked the crowd how many had been at the auction before. Nearly all raised their hands.
And how many have never been? he asked.
Only 1-year-old Robert Chavez Jr., perched in the arms of his father, slowly raised his hand, drawing a collective “Awww” from the bidders.
The downside of buying a tree at the auction: You can’t see all the trees at once, as one would at a lot. So you never know whether the next one off the truck will be even more beautiful, and perhaps cheaper too.
Long-timers know how to strategize if they want a steal: Come very early or very late on a weeknight instead of the more crowded weekends, for one. Even better: during Monday Night Football or a USC-UCLA matchup.
The elder Chavez this year made the mistake of going to dinner with his family first. By the time he arrived at the lot after 8 p.m., it was prime time, and the crowd, which ebbs and flows throughout the night, had thickened to a few dozen. It took 45 minutes -- far longer than usual -- before he landed a 7-foot beauty for about $28. And the family still needed one for his mother.
As the children grew tired, he went for option two: the fence. That’s Charlie Brown territory, where the bid-less rejects land -- typically after Cornelson says something like this: “You don’t like it? We’ll put it on the fence. We’ll deal with it later. That’s the way we handle all our problems.” During the frequent breaks, the rejects are sold at a $5 discount off the starting prices of $20 to $30. Not bad for trees that wouldn’t embarrass anyone and could sell for double that at retail lots around the city.
The only species auctioned are Douglas firs and a far smaller number of grand firs. For those who prefer the darker, more stately noble fir, United Melon has a mini-forest of them in the tent adjacent to its auction. But they sell at fixed -- and far higher -- prices, with regal 8-footers commanding $155.
The founders of Los Angeles-based United Melon, Ernie and Nia Zefaris, started selling trees in 1968 to supplement their seasonal watermelon sales, said their son, Jim Zefaris, 50, who now presides over the business. (The company’s logo sports a watermelon slice with Christmas trees carved into it.)
The Zefarises were among about two dozen vendors who shipped trees via boxcars to a nexus of a few dozen railroad tracks at 8th Street and Alameda in downtown. Some had been wholesaling trees there for a few decades.
So many folks would show up to try to buy the freshest trees -- thinking they would bypass the mom-and-pop tree stands -- that unofficial bidding wars broke out as each tree came off the boxcar. Realizing a demand, United Melon and two other vendors began running official auctions.
Regulars such as Rebecca Matevos, now 48 and at the auction with her two teenage sons, can remember going every year as a child to the railroad yard to pick out a tree, going from auction to auction to scope out a quarry. She has never bought a tree anywhere else.
But the train tracks gave way to modern industrial parks. The Los Angeles Times built a printing plant that covered the site where the trees once were sold. (“We don’t want to tell a story about how the L.A. Times dislodged a 70-year-old tradition,” Zefaris joked to a Times reporter. “Somebody might get upset.”)
Consumers started snapping up ever more appealing and technologically advanced artificial trees made in Asia, which these days practically put themselves up, complete with pre-strung lights.
Now only United Melon’s auction remains. It’s had its share of scares too, including an 11th-hour eviction last year by the county to make way for Metro bus parking at its longtime 7th Street and Alameda lot. They moved a couple of miles north on Alameda to College Street, where longtime patrons still manage to find them.
“They keep moving it, and we’ve got to find it,” said Candace Erling, 51, a nurse. “But we love this. Every family needs traditions, and we hope they don’t quit this.... It’s one of the greatest things about Christmas.”
Zefaris said he hopes to keep the auction going for years to come. Thanks to its wholesale business, which kicks in 90% of its sales, United Melon has grown into one of the largest Christmas tree sellers in the United States, shipping about 150,000 trees to vendors across the country, including chains such as Home Depot. The 5,000 trees Zefaris expects to sell at the auction are a small fraction of that.
But the auction is more about tradition for the Zefaris clan too. Jim fell in love with his future wife, Joanna, when she came with her sister to buy a tree about 20 years ago. (Joanna said she’s still mad that he charged her for it, even though she gave him her phone number. “Would you respect me if I gave away the merchandise?” Zefaris retorted.)
Their two children, Ernie and Nia, named after the company’s founders, hang around the lot as well. Ernie, now 14, plays Christmas carols on his alto saxophone, and longtime employees assure him he gets better every year.
“The bottom line is, it’s a great experience for me as a businessperson, because we’re seeing people who are in good moods,” Zefaris said. “They’re coming down to buy a tree. It’s a happy occasion.... You go to the Westside and you see people in $100,000 automobiles flipping each other off. It’s a miserable society we live in, but you come to the tree lot and everybody’s happy.”
United Melon Distributors auction, at College and Alameda streets across from the Chinatown stop on the Metro Gold line, operates weeknights before Christmas from 6 to 10 p.m. and weekends from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
