It’s a question I’ve agonized over in my years reporting on diverse communities for the L.A. Times. Though gentrification and rising rents are often the immediate causes, the ultimate reasons that businesses close and properties change hands are often more complicated.
Su, the owner of the market for the last 12 years, allows customers to park in the narrow alley next to his store. It’s not Su’s parking spot, but his customers never stay long and the previous landlord was fine with it.A new landlord took over two years ago, and Su says they’ve argued over the parking spot, as well as the condition of the building’s trash receptacle, which attracts rodents and is sometimes used as a toilet by homeless people.
Su, a Chinese immigrant from Guangdong, came to the U.S. three decades ago. He worked in Chinese restaurants when he first arrived, then took over the grocery store 12 years ago when business in Chinatown was booming, he said. There’s been a grocery store in that space for several decades, he said. Su says his profits have only gone downhill since he opened — though he says he could have kept the place open for many more years. He brandishes a kohlrabi at me and begins to school me in grocery store economics.“One-fifth goes to rent,” he says, rotating the kohlrabi on its axis. “One-fifth is wasted because no one buys. One-fifth goes to the wholesale price.”It’s not that we want to leave. It’s that they gave us no choice.The grocery store business is difficult. Su is resigned to his fate.
frankshyong Yes, retailing is complicated
frankshyong Good. They need to learn to not be so bigoted. We're all one race: the human race.
frankshyong How many Chinese people live in Chinatown? There are plenty of Chinese grocery stores in the San Gabriel Valley