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. 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.
“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, Mixcotl, at 24th Street and South Van Ness Avenue, where a group of tourists wearing khaki shorts and Chicago Cubs’ hats checked the wrestling masks on display.
They had a steady stream of customers from residents or tourists getting off BART to visit 24th Street. That model started to lose steam in 2020 as merchants moved on with personal projects, and it finally ended with the pandemic. What came after the pandemic was an onslaught of new vendors, many from elsewhere in the city or the Bay Area. The products shifted from artisanal goods that were unique to other more generic products — toiletries, electronics, groceries, vitamins or clothes. Some sold from neatly arranged tables, others from paperbags, backpacks or suitcases on wheels.
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.
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.