Illegal Street Vendors Targeted in Boyle Heights

The enemy wears a red apron, armed with kitchen knives, tortillas and a slab of beef on a spit.

As in most wars, the battle is over territory--in this case, a Boyle Heights neighborhood where residents are renewing their fight against guerrilla street vendors.

Angry neighbors point out their foes during a late night reconnaissance.

“There,” shouted Carlos Montante in Spanish, peering with three comrades outside the tinted windows of a white van cruising along Olympic Boulevard. “You see that?”

Not there an hour before, an illegal taco stand now stood in front of a closed auto repair shop, surrounded by customers cheerfully swallowing their dinner near an open fire.

“Oooii! I wish we had a camera,” said Rosa Gabaldon, peeking from behind the van’s curtains.

Why the fuss? To residents like Gabaldon, the recent upsurge of such temporary stands is the symbolic last straw in a neighborhood steeped in far more serious, and seemingly unsolvable, social problems.

“They’ve abandoned us,” she said, ticking off a list of historic grievances such as freeway pollution, gang violence and overcrowded schools. “We won’t be ignored on this issue.”

The residents’ anger has prompted officials to seek a Los Angeles city and county task force to combat about 30 unlicensed taco and burrito stands in Boyle Heights, nearly all of them popular hangouts for other neighbors. There were about five in 1998, neighbors said.

That effort--meant to fine the vendors and eventually close down their stands--is sure to revive an old debate in working-poor neighborhoods, between those struggling to survive on what they sell on the street and others annoyed by the intrusion of unregulated commerce.

Juan Lopez doesn’t see why anyone should want to crack down on his thriving Olympic Boulevard stand when just up the street the sounds of gunfire and sirens are a regular occurrence.

“We’re not selling drugs here or robbing anybody,” said Lopez, enveloped in the aroma of fried beef, chili and onions and surrounded by gossiping customers. “We deserve a chance to support our families.”

Nearby, two cooks chopped meat on a grill in a flurry of knives and prongs that would make a Benihana restaurant chef dizzy. One stopped briefly to accept a few crumpled dollar bills from a customer before again handling the beef and tortillas before him.

With no sink or running water in sight, the cook did not wash his hands.

Such unsanitary conditions are a large reason why the stands need to be closed, said Los Angeles Councilman Nick Pacheco, who represents Boyle Heights.

He has persuaded the city to pursue creating an evening task force that would fine the vendors for county health violations and eventually shut them down.

City officials and Los Angeles police have traditionally looked the other way when it comes to illegal vending, Pacheco said.

But, he added, “the reality is that none of these individuals are preparing their food properly when they don’t have hot running water nearby and use the same hands to cook as they use to exchange money.”

Though scores of tamale, corn and fruit vendors operating illegally during the day would not be affected by the new task force, they will be targeted next, Pacheco said.

Pacheco said there are no plans for a legal vending zone in Boyle Heights, such as the one created near MacArthur Park in 1995 when controversy over street vendors grew there.

Most lunch truck owners are legally allowed to sell cooked food, after obtaining business licenses and other permits from the city and meeting county health and safety codes.

Many Boyle Heights residents support the taco and burrito stands, saying the practice allows the vendors to make a respectable living not available from a minimum wage job--which many vendors have during the day.

Plus, often at 50 cents apiece, the inexpensive tacos allow for a cheap meal in an area filled with families living below the federal poverty line.

“These are people who are not likely to be able to afford a meal in a restaurant,” said Margarita Sanchez, one of the scores of people who regularly flock around a stand that operates from a neighbor’s frontyard near Soto and 7th streets. The scene often resembles a family barbecue.

“They do a good job,” Sanchez said of the stand. “They never leave a mess, they give you plenty of condiments, and it’s good. We never get sick.”

Jose Diaz Bernal, who operates the Soto Street stand, added: “The only one here who wants me to leave is the guy down the street” who operates illegally out of a lunch truck that is not as popular.

Ross Valencia, whose Boyle Heights Residents Assn. drove most of the initial effort to eliminate the stands, said it is unfair to taxpaying legitimate restaurants to allow the illegal vendors to thrive.

“They’re doing harm to our businesses, people who have climbed to get a restaurant of their own only to see someone illegally plant themselves in front of their establishment” and lure away customers, he said.

For example, Maria Guillen runs an often empty Mexican restaurant on Olympic Boulevard that is sandwiched by three illegal stands full of customers.

Where she must pay taxes and ensure that her restaurant complies with health codes, “they don’t have to worry about anything,” she said. After business dropped recently, “I couldn’t pay the girl who used to help me [as a waitress]. I had to let her go. And she has a family.”

However, Juan Manuel Lugo, owner of a more popular Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood, was more understanding.

“One way or another, we all began that way,” he said. “Not to allow [illegal vendors] the same opportunity is like saying there should be no more immigrants here after you came over.”