Swapping days

Lolita Harper

The mood during the last Saturday of the Orange Coast College swap

meet was simply one of resignation.

“We’re not happy about it but what can you do?” said Suzy Godfrey, of

Anaheim, who runs the $1 Store. “We’re hoping that they reconsider, or

fix the problem, but until then, we just do what we have to do.”

Godfrey is just one of the hundreds of entrepreneurs who set up shop

in the parking lot of OCC each weekend. She and her fellow vendors

combine to create a shopping venue that offers rows and rows of

inexpensive and eclectic goods.

On Saturday, vendors offered a wide variety of merchandise, ranging

from brand-name knockoffs to plants, from used toys to clothes or

furniture. Each booth was stockpiled with wares as vendors hoped to

unload as much as they could on their final full weekend of selling.

Next week, the swap meet will be cut nearly in half -- from about 400

vendors to 275 and from a two-day operation to Sundays only. The changes

came after city officials uncovered the college’s long-ignored permit.

Last month, city officials notified the college that the campus swap

meet was violating the school’s 1984 agreement with the city. A study --

prompted by Councilwoman Libby Cowan in November because of an apparent

increase in traffic along Fairview Road -- found that the swap meet was

operating with an excess of about 200 vendors and an additional day not

authorized by the city.

College officials quickly agreed to a scaled-down swap meet.

The decision left hundreds of vendors with few options.

The vendors, many of whom are immigrants, said they will persevere --

somehow. Their work ethic and survival instincts do not afford them the

luxury of mulling over the unfortunate circumstance. They will get along.

They have to.

If they can’t stay at the OCC swap meet, they will move to another.

Some said they would go as far as Fontana or Carson to make a living.

“I won’t be here next week,” said a vendor who calls himself “Smiley

Man” and speaks with an accent from the Virgin Islands. “But it will be

OK. There is always a way.”

Smiley Man’s booth offers a hodgepodge of used items including hair

clips, children’s books, a cookie jar, wine goblets -- not matching sets

-- an old Cabbage Patch Kid, a clock and a tire. The various items are

simply strewn out over the asphalt.

“Everything here is cheap,” Smiley Man said. “We sell for fun.”

The St. Thomas native said he uses the discretionary income from the

swap meet to make ends meet and send some money back to his family on the

island.

“I’m really a reggae musician,” he said, while leaning in as if her

were confessing a secret.

While “Smiley Man” took a laid-back view of the situation, 15-year

swap meet veteran Ed Yang was a little more concerned.

“I will lose money,” Yang said in broken English. “This is all my

income and they are taking half.”

Yang owns Ted’s Pets and Supplies, where he sells parakeets,

lovebirds, cockatoos, canaries and all the bird seed, cages and toys a

person would need to keep one. The Santa Ana resident said he will stay

at the Sunday-only swap meet until he can find another location.

“It caught us off-guard,” said son Henty Yang, who has worked at the

family business since he was 7. “Over the years the swap meet got greedy

and opened more and more booths to make more money but they weren’t

thinking about the problems it might cause.”

Now the vendors find themselves the unfortunate victims of actions

that were not their own, he said.

“Bigger is not always better,” Henty Yang added.

The two-day swap meet brings in about $1.5 million in revenue per

year, college officials said. That money helps fund community programs

like small business counseling, performing arts and youth summer camps.

Jim McIlwain, OCC vice president of administrative services, said the

only thing the school is guilty of is actively promoting the swap meet.

“We think we have the biggest and best swap meet around but obviously

we can see now that our success has caused an issue with congestion,”

McIlwain said.

College and city officials said they will work together in the coming

month to figure out the best solution to the closure. Various traffic

studies, flow charts and vendor configurations will be examined to create

a swap meet that vendors, Costa Mesa residents and city and college

officials can live with.

In the meantime, hundreds of vendors and shoppers will have to adjust

to the change.

Juana Mateo, of Santa Ana, said she has been coming to the swap meet

on Saturdays for the past three years. She can find items at the swap

meet that could cost up to three times as much in conventional retail

stores.

Mateo will continue to come to the Sunday swap meet, though the day is

usually reserved for church, she said.

The bargain rates allow her to stretch her dollars and make ends meet,

she said.

“I can’t afford not to come,” she said in Spanish.

* Lolita Harper covers Costa Mesa. She may be reached at (949)

574-4275 or by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .