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The Slauson Swap Meet: History of South LA鈥檚 Iconic Indoor Shopping Center | Los Angeles Swap Meets - YouTube
Channel: The South LA Recap
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From gritty rap songs to trending
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club attire, the tall, green and wide L.A.
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Slauson swap meet has stood
as an integral part of South Los Angeles.
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Sitting at the crossroads
of culture and socioeconomics.
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So what's the story behind that L.A.
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slice and swap meet anyway?
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And how has it added
to the fabric of South L.A.?
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Hey, guys, and welcome back
to another episode of the South L.A.
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Recap.
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Don't forget to like comment and subscribe
to learn more about South L.A.
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on the regular.
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Today, we're going to take a look
at the Slauson Swap Meet
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and how it rules
out of de-industrialization in South L.A.
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But knowing this phenomenon
hasn't occurred everywhere.
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How did this last and swap meet
end up on 1600 West Slauson?
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And what does that mean for the community?
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Going back into the Los Angeles
Building and Safety records,
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the first piece of property
located at 1600 West
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Slauson was a house with a barn
built in 1919.
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Twenty years later, that house
and parcels around it were acquired
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by a new owner to build a series of stores
for which about 11 years
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serve the Harvard Park
community of South Los Angeles in 1948.
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Those stores were raised
to build a factory,
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an office building leased by Lightcraft
of California.
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Lightcraft of California was a company
that sold light fixtures
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that were pretty swanky, modern
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and now considered vintage
for several residential spaces.
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In fact, this particular space was used
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as a factory
and a distribution point for the company.
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In Los Angeles, Lightcraft
continued to operate in the factory
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and office building at 1600 West Slauson
for 24 years.
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Yet in 1984, the company ran
its last liquidation ad in the L.A.
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Times and ceased production
of its lights in Los Angeles.
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Less than
a year later, in February of 1985,
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the factory building was acquired
by a new owner, Mr.
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Park D.J.,
who submitted an alteration permit
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to convert the factory
into a retail location
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in November of 1985, just a year
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since Lightcraft of California
vacated its factory.
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The Korea Times ran an advertisement
announcing the grand opening of the L.A.
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Slauson Swap Meet on December 5th,
just in time for the Christmas season.
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Wait a minute.
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How did this factory turn into an indoor
swap meet all of a sudden?
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This requires expert advice.
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I reached out to Dr.
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Alec Stewart, an urban historian and Melon
Junior fellow at the University
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of Pennsylvania. Dr.
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Stewart knows everything that there
is to know about indoor swap meets.
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And he took me back to the roots
of the indoor swap meet phenomenon
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in Los Angeles.
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Yeah, well, the indoor swap meet boom
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was really actually a product
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of Los Angeles in that one being the de
industrialization of South L.A.
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and in the greater L.A.
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metropolitan area during the early 1980s,
that really opened up a lot of space
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and concurrent with the closure
of factories ranging from GM to aerospace
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industries in the San Fernando Valley
to many smaller industries.
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So as commercial and manufacturing
companies left the region,
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these new establishments came in
and used the space
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to create a source of convenience
for the region.
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Outdoor swap
meets are a lot different from indoor swap
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meets and outdoor swap meets.
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You can find secondhand
goods, sometimes custom goods
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sell them something new and indoor swap
meets like the ones we're seeing here.
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They're known for custom garments,
inexpensive clothing
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and even places that you can get new
and cheaply installed electronics.
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There was an initial swap meet
called the Western Swap Meet in Koreatown
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that was opened in November of 1983.
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And it was it was structured
sort of like a market you'd find in Seoul.
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It was a garment and textile market,
and it lasted for only two years.
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It was so successful
that the property owner decided
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to tear it down
and to build a shopping mall.
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So a bit of irony there.
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What happened was that many of the vendors
within that business
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in Koreatown ended up
sort of scattering and opening up,
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in some cases with friends
and other people who pooled their capital.
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Opening up swap meets like the Compton
Swap Meet, and then other vendors
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sort of moved out into South L.A.
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and the San Gabriel Valley
and the San Fernando Valley,
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sort of fueling a proliferation
of of swap meets.
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At the same time, a trip to the Slauson
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Swap Meet or any swap meet, for that
matter, was a lot of times
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more convenient than traveling outside
of the neighborhood to shop.
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To learn more about the Slauson Swap Meet,
I actually reached out
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and talked to my dad, Garth McAdams,
who emigrated from Jamaica
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to Los Angeles, and here's
his experience with the Slauson Swap meet.
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I thought
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if I'm in the eighties, like 1988,
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my first outfit, I get what I wear
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and socks come from the swap
meet sluts and swap meet.
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That was the first time
when when I in California,
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somebody brought to my attention,
lay them out.
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They tell me where they get them from that
I never I never been to Slauson
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Swap Meet and them that's
why I get into just this Slauson swap meet
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and there might come
a Slauson Swap Meet baby
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like everybody else.
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But we go buy clothes and jewelry.
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We want to go to concert.
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That's how you go by outfit that
wherever you go, that's be the outfit.
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You want some jewelry.
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That's where you go
get your jewelry from wherever you want.
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And accessories like clothes,
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earrings, anything the Slauson Swap Meet.
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Now that
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we know more about indoor swap meets,
we can actually look more into the L.A.
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Slauson Swap Meet and its founder.
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Like we saw before,
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the Korea Times ran an advertisement
announcing the grand opening of the L.A.
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Slauson
Swap Meet operated by Michael Yoon.
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In his research, Dr.
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Stewart found that you started this Los
and Swap meet with his wife
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Sandra in 1985,
and it wasn't long after that.
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The L.A.
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Slauson Swap meet became one of the
largest swap meets in all of Los Angeles.
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You know, most swap
meets were actually quite small.
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They ranged in size from
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maybe ten booths to maybe 50.
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The slots and swap meet, on
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the other hand, was a former
industrial building and quite large
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with hundreds of vendors.
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While swap meets became more common
in the mid eighties, they faced
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a number of protests and boycotts
by the end of the decade.
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In particular, a tension between Korean
vendors and African-American shoppers
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developed over tense arguments
and disagreements across several stores.
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The grassroots group
called Organization of Mutual Neighborhood
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Interest on the call
to boycott Korean-American merchants
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because of these sour business encounters,
citing anecdotes of rudeness
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and failure to exchange or refund products
sold at the individual swap meet shops.
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A lot of the critiques were justified
and that there was a
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a perception that was that was true, that
the ownership was not leasing booths
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to African-American vendors,
despite the fact that
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the vast majority of customers
it's Lawson were black.
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After that,
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that protest and boycott
the units who operated the swap meet,
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they basically embarked on a public
relations campaign and held a series
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of trainings with their vendors
to try to heal that divide.
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By the early 1990s, the L.A.
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Slauon Swap Meet became one of the largest
swap meets in the cities to reach
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an agreement with omni ending the small
but mighty boycott.
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This resulted in all vendor merchants
guaranteeing receipts
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and providing a minimum
72 hour return or exchange policy.
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The swap meets also promised to work
with the community
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to uplift African-Americans.
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The swap meets primary clientele.
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But the swap meet didn't stop there.
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It developed a new customer
complaint system, and it hired
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a new African-American customer service
representative to help solve
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any conflicts or arguments on the spot
that should have solved the problem.
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Right.
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By 1991, there were over 100 swap meets
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in the city of Los Angeles,
and EWN at the time had expanded the L.A.
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swap meet to over 150 micro retailers.
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In April of 1992, however, Central
and South Los Angeles were under fire
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after an unwelcome verdict on the Rodney
King police beating
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swap meets along with many other Korean
establishments
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were targets of looting and arson.
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The Slauson swap meet,
however, survived the looting
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and the arson not by faith, but by fire.
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Well, that was a sight to see.
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There was God.
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And so at the swap meet with the roof with
the security is not only
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Korean was up there
black people was helping
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and that's basically
they have a security army.
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The Slauson Swap Meet was,
the only place nobody ever go.
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And they tried,
but they would get shot at.
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Yeah. So I, you know, drive past
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today.
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The Slauson swap meet stands as an iconic
cultural monument in South L.A.
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while swap meets like
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these started in an attempt to fill
the convenience gap in several L.A.
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neighborhoods.
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Many of them have not weathered
the test of time.
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The Slauson swap meet, however,
still remains busy on a Saturday morning
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with over 120 vendors
still active on any given day.
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Whatever the case is, indoor swap
meets have a longstanding history
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ranging over 40 decades
that is interwoven within South L.A.
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history.
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That's all for this episode
of the South L.A.
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Recap, and I really hope
you guys learn something new today.
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If you guys have any questions
or if you want to share your experience
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at the Slauson Swap Meet,
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leave it down in the comments section
below and I'll catch you guys around
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on the Recap.
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