Once again I take an idea from co-producer Omar. When I told him about this D.I.Y. series, he said used to pass by folks selling stuff on the streets near his pad. The informal market stretched for about 3-4 blocks. Folks were hunkered down over tarps and old blankets, calling out what they had as people walked by. He was always interested in this little cultural happening and the economy that it created. This would be our excuse to go hang out with nuestro pueblo.
It was not easy by any stretch of the imagination.
On its best nights it was a cultural fair stripped down to its essentials. By that I mean without the dances and informational booths that you ignore on your way in. There was just food and other shit you needed. On the worst nights, it was boooooooooriiiiiiiiiiing. When few people were on the street, most of the vendors left early.
Everyone thought I was a gringo cop. One woman, clutching a bulging plastic bag, said she was out of tamales when I asked to buy one. Another young lady claimed she didn’t have any pollo dorado (fried chicken, no breading). Which was funny because I must have past her three or four times that night while she was calling out “Pollo dorado, pollo dorado, pollo dorado, pollo dorado, pollo dorado.” It was only because of the bombardment of advertising that I succumbed to her siren song in the first place. Well, their loss. I bought some carne asada tacos from a guy with a propane powered fryer. I chowed the first one in front of the tamale lady, the second in front of pollo dorado lady. Oooh. Diss.
Some stretches of the street were unworkably busy so we settled on a quieter block. I began to chat up a few folks, who, I found out later, pretty much assumed I was a cop because of my haircut and bad Spanish. I looked for acceptable clothes to buy as a conversation starter. As it goes with second and third hand stuff, you don’t always get what you are looking for. I wanted a dark grey sweatshirt, but settled on a navy blue Tommy Hilfiger zip-up fleece. I know it’s not the 90s anymore, but Tommy kept me warm and cozy.
We finally got through to some people. I was there when Maria, the main interviewee, had her cart snatched by a beefy cop with an attitude. Now let’s clear something up. Police cruisers go by the market all the time. But only 4 or 5 officers actually make people move along. And only a couple actually confiscate stuff. One was a guy (who the vendors say is Salvadoran) that seemed to be the most antagonistic. When I saw him confiscate, he wasn’t just doing his job, he stopped to yell at Maria for a minute, too. Which seemed uncalled for when she just lost $200 worth of clothes.
Maria started talking to us about her work. But no one else did. So I started to bring my kids old clothes and old DVDs to sell. For one thing it passed the time, for another it helped pay for all the street food we ate. I developed the habit of throwing down Guatemalan tamales during shooting, then wrapping up the day with tacos de lengua. It also gave us a reason to talk to the vendors around us. When business is slow, everyone kills time by milling around and making small talk.
Standing there and waiting for folks to buy my old Sesame Street DVDs, I also had plenty of time to think about what was going on around me. The low-level entrepreneurship and the free market economy. Unlike other folks in this series, the vendors are capitalist and just want to move product. But they run up against the law. There are rules to any society. The vendors know that. But times is hard all around. And when you need some extra cash on a weekend night, this is better than a lot of dirty things you could be doing.
There was an LA Times Article about vendors in a different part of town. It says that as the economy settles in to its badness, more people have been coming to sell things. So, it seems, when the economy gets better less people will have to sell stuff. When that happens, only a lonely few will be left to commiserate about how they were not lucky enough to stay at home on Sunday evening. Or maybe they will not just commiserate, but also revel in the sense of community this all brings. Like I said, it’s a cultural fair stripped to its essentials.
I love this story. I appreciate hearing the vendors speak, and enjoyed the creative way you kept identities private. Shooting below the neck, at the ground, all the angles of shadows–those were great. It felt like the respect you had for the people and the constraints of privacy made your piece all the more creative and experimental. Loved the voice of someone speaking about daily life while a flap of cloth allows the viewer to have a limited view of people on the street. Showing the way people survive on the street, out of work, despite the police, is a really important story.