For 12 years, a weekly market of vendors flourished at the 24th Street BART plaza. No one complained about the plaza being overrun, and no one set up makeshift vending sites selling unpermitted goods. Today, that marketplace, which ran from 2008 to 2020, has proven impossible to replicate.
By 2021, the Mission’s BART plazas and nearby sidewalks were overrun with vendors, and city officials have tried multiple strategies to restrain them. After issuing a complete ban in November of last year, the city this month started a small pilot project allowing 10 vendors to operate between 23rd and 24th streets on Mission, but it is too early to tell if this will work. Day to day, it seems uneven.
On a recent Tuesday, for example, only four stalls bothered to set up. And, although the block is supposed to be monitored by police, at least three unpermitted vendors sold items nearby. One sold shampoo for $5 out of a paper bag, another sold a pair of $120 tennis shoes for $50, and a third sold a Gillette razor for $5.
What changed between the 12 years of a successful market and the post-pandemic period? Mission Local talked to local businesses, officials and some of the vendors who participated in the earlier small market. They pointed to the composition of the earlier sellers, the location, a new state vending law and a general lack of enforcement.
The earlier market
The earlier market seems almost quaint in its purpose and composition. It started in 2008 as an effort from about a dozen local merchants who, supported by the Mission Economic Development Agency, created the space to sell local, Latinx, and Latin American artisanal products. Most of the vendors did not have stores in the Mission, and the Saturday market gave them a space to sell in the neighborhood.
“The main idea was to create a market where merchants, especially those on 24th Street, could sell their artisanal products. The focus, also, was to promote art and culture, because these were very important to us,” said Ricardo Peña as he stood outside his shop, Mixcoatl, at the corner of 24th Street and South Van Ness Avenue, where a group of tourists wearing khaki shorts and Chicago Cubs hats checked out the wrestling masks on display.
The merchants had permits from BART to operate at the location. They paid for the permits and insurance, and each contributed $40 a week to fund their organization Mission Small Business Association.
The market, the vendors said, created a space curated with handmade jewelry, shirts, textiles, purses and scarves made by Peruvian, Mexican, Guatemalan and Ecuadorian hands. It rarely attracted unpermitted vendors.
They had a steady stream of customers from residents or tourists getting off BART to visit 24th Street.
The vendors said they took ownership of keeping the plaza clean and lively. Peña said vendors used the $40 a week they pay to their group to hire artists to perform at the space, and local day workers to sweep the perimeter around the BART station.
“What we made in sales was not only for us, but we also shared it,” he said, referring to the hired musicians and day workers.
Diana Medina, owner of Dijo Jewelry on 24th Street and former treasurer for the group, remembered community giveaways of presents and groceries at Christmas, or special festivals for Mother’s Day. “It was a boomerang, because the community gave us, and we gave back to them,” she said.
That model started to lose steam in 2020 as merchants moved on with personal projects, and it finally ended with the pandemic.
Vending post-pandemic
What came after the pandemic was an onslaught of new vendors, many from elsewhere in the city or the Bay Area. Products shifted from artisanal goods that were unique to other, more generic items: Toiletries, electronics, groceries, vitamins or clothes. Some sold from neatly arranged tables, others from paper bags, backpacks or suitcases on wheels.
“People come to sell perfumes, detergent, and they receive the permits to sell all that kind of stuff,” said Juana Laurel from Qosqo Maky at 2515 Mission St., who also participated in the artisanal market. “You can’t mix all of that with art and artisanal goods, because everything has, and should have, its own space.”
“We used to sell art that was handmade, and often brought from our countries,” she added.
No one blames the vendors, but people said the products for sale could explain why sales are more difficult, even for those with permits.
The seven sanctioned vendors who were set up for business on a recent Wednesday, for example, sold hats, jewelry, backpacks, electronics and stuffed animals. In a sense, they were selling items similar to the ones offered at stores all along Mission Street.
And, nowadays, even these permitted vendors battle with the competition from the continued presence of unpermitted vendors. While the city said officers would be walking the block between 24th and 23rd Streets, their presence is irregular. More often, officers are stationed at the 24th and 16th Street BART plazas, an effective presence in keeping vendors there at bay.
Miriam Huerta, an employee of 20 years at La Mejor Bakery and a local Mission street vendor who sells radios, said the unpermitted vendors have nothing to fear, because enforcement is lax.
“Now you see people from all over the place coming here. It used to be only people from the neighborhood, but now it’s an open market,” said Huerta. “A lot of people come from Hayward, because you don’t get away with that there.”
Two additional business owners who have been in the area for decades, and who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said the lack of enforcement from local authorities is killing their establishments. They showed photos of magazines and burned clothes outside of their storefronts, and told stories about people breaking their windows and stealing from them.
The San Francisco Police Department declined to comment for this story.
A change in vending laws
For one employee at the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the pandemic was a factor in the rise in vending, but so was the passage of SB 946 in 2018, which decriminalized street vending across California. Early last month, state Sen. Scott Wiener and Mayor London Breen announced the introduction of SB 925, allowing police to ticket vendors suspected of selling stolen goods, or charge them with a misdemeanor .
“All of a sudden, there was a gap in time as this policy rolled out, and it probably coincided around the pandemic. Now, there’s no regulatory body, and you have to create regulations in order to be able to enforce them,” said the city employee.
Still, that did not create issues between 2018 and 2020.
But it is the case that the number of vendors has skyrocketed, from the dozen or so that participated in the earlier market to more than a hundred registered vendors, according to Rodrigo Lopez, president of Mission Street Permitted Vendors. And that does not count the dozens of others without permits.
Artisanal vendors make up only about 20 percent of the permitted vendors selling between La Placita and Mission Street.
It’s unclear how the city will manage vending in the future. The candidates running for office in District 9 have not offered solutions that appear much different from what the city has already tried.
As for Peña, Medina and Laurel, the vendors of the earlier market, they only want to see a clean, thriving Mission Street corridor.
“We are in love with this neighborhood, and what we want is for the Mission to see improvements, rather than degrading,” said Peña. “We want this corridor, which is now a cultural district, to flourish.”
Every time I walk along Mission Street there, during the SFPD/Public Works staffed hours at the BART plaza, there are 4-6 officials all hanging together at the plaza, chit-chatting, along with a squad car. Meanwhile, there will be half a dozen illegal “vendors” halfway down toward 23rd Street. Why do the cops/public works have to congregate? Why don’t they have at least one person patrolling up and down Mission Street a bit? Not very effective use of resources.
Cops are poorly led,
Under Feinstein there was an SFPD Koban at all of the BART stops and in Chinatown. No cop cars or DPW vehicles and it worked fine just as it does all over the planet.
Cops have lost a personal relationship with their neighborhoods or even, like the Mission, view the people with suspicion and instead of planning Festivals they plan mass raids like in Hill Bomb.
Under Charter Amendment approved by Board of Supes yesterday a Sergeant with 30 years (even Laterals) can make over a thousand dollars a day for the next 5 years then retire.
It’s an old story – both for San Francisco as a whole and the Mission specifically:
– Liberal politics take root (not necessarily a bad thing)
– Anti-policing rhetoric increases
– Organized crime moves in to exploit the political weakness (be assured that the stolen goods sellers are not themselves thieves but fencers in a complex and large organization)
– Quality of life degrades due to organized crime, business suffer
– Political dysfunction is unable to respond (see the conflicting citizen criticism in the article of “cops don’t do anything” against the hysterics around ACAB, etc)
In 2-5 years the feds will bust a ringleader in the suburbs, like this article from San Diego
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/bonsall-woman-retail-theft-ring-ulta-sephora-arrest/3459998/?amp=1
I have lived here throughout the period described and I don’t remember seeing artisanal products for sale on Mission Street. As long as I can remember, it has been where people flog goods like toothpaste and anti-perspirant stolen from Walgreens and other stores.
There were indeed a few vendors at 24th St BART on weekends who sold nice jewelry and crafts. Now it’s pretty much items I bet were lifted from delivery trucks.
I can’t imagine why you don’t remember. The BART plaza was colorful and attractive. The music was fun. It made walking in the neighborhood cheerful for locals, and people came from all over to enjoy the ambiance. The money tourists spent in local shops and restaurants raised the standard of living for all of us.
I’d LOVE to see that vibe come back!
Would it be impossible to allow artisan product and food vendors on Mission St. / 16th / 24th, but not allow the other types of vendors? I know these things can be subjective but most of the people selling now are more like a flea market / garage sale of products like you’d find at any of the junk stores or Walgreens. Unless the fencing operations are going to start providing artisanal products to their crews, it would seem like another way of enforcing things instead of permit / no permit, and would conflict less with most brick & mortar merchants in the Mission.