A stop on the road to romance

Senovia Amigon arrived at the Boyle Heights street corner at 3 a.m. Valentine’s Day to stake out her turf.

After eight years peddling romantic trinkets near the auto body shops and menudo stands at 4th and Soto streets, Amigon wasn’t about to let anyone crowd her customary spot.

“If someone comes,” she said in Spanish, “you kick them out.”

At the prime corner location, early arrival could mean the difference between a modest windfall and bunches of wilting, leftover flowers.

Locals know the crossroads as a reliable spot to pick up long-stemmed red roses for a valentine or a bouquet come Mother’s Day. The sellers come year after year, wearing down their fingers picking through stems and hustling to make a few extra dollars.

Amigon’s business instincts are sharp: She offers big-ticket items such as $50 oversize bears. Then there are the rose-shaped lollipops for a buck, for the kids and older folks who don’t have much to spend.

Healthy Valentine’s Day sales can reach $700, said Amigon, 51, who on most days cares for elderly people and sells beauty products to help make payments on her Compton home.

A morning rain could have dampened sales, but it didn’t diminish her enthusiasm.

When a group of teenage girls hesitated at her $3 balloons, Amigon, not one to let a potential customer pass by, pointed them to the $1 selection.

For anyone priced out of fancy flower shops, gourmet chocolates or diamonds, this was the spot. At each corner, tables were piled with red and pink everything; some vendors spilled down the block into less prime real estate.

A cluster of metallic red heart balloons popped against the overcast sky Thursday morning, with black-and-red underwear nestled next to cellophane-wrapped perfume, the smell of blooming roses wafting by sellers’ tables.

The displays caught the eye of Vanessa Tello, 34, who picked up two bamboo plants decorated with little white bears holding a heart.

“I came to get gas,” she said of her impulse buy for co-worker girlfriends made after a quick survey of her options. Amigon’s prices, she said, seemed the best.

“We don’t have boyfriends -- we have to treat each other,” said Tello, who lives in the neighborhood and works at a Mid-Wilshire legal services company.

At the busy crossroads -- near a couple of schools, several bus stops and a busy market -- cutthroat Valentine’s capitalism came down to prices.

Fernando Aceves picked up a $50 arrangement of red roses and white mums for his wife; the same item was selling across the street for $25 more.

“She’s waiting for flowers,” said Aceves, 35, who lives in East Los Angeles. If he were to come home empty-handed, the newspaper deliveryman said, he would end up sleeping on the couch.

The goods for sale up and down the street are “practically the same,” said Roxanne Menendez, 19, of East Los Angeles, who was helping a friend monitor her mother’s stall farther up the street from Amigon’s.

Sometimes, Menendez said, you’re forced to cut a deal: “You have to get people interested.”

Adriana Jibera hoped the freshness of her flowers would set them apart from the others.

The 40-year-old spent a week crafting the arrangements; huge bunches of gladioli and sunflowers cost as much as $95.

But the retail instinct runs in her family -- Jibera’s mother sold items in Mexico, Jibera has worked Valentine’s Day sales for two decades, and her 16-year-old daughter Maggy Fuentes was selling teddy bears across the street for her mom Thursday.

“It’s a lot of work,” Maggy said.

Hard-core sellers like Amigon planned to work their booths late into the night after the stores had closed -- at least until customers stopped coming.

“We’re still selling,” Menendez said of late-night Valentine’s customers looking for a last-minute token of affection. “They’re like, ‘What should I get? Can you guys help?’ ”

susannah.rosenblatt @latimes.com