As the holidays washed over Los Angeles in the final weeks of 2024, a pop-up market on the western edge of MacArthur Park offered bargain prices. There were toys, tools, clothes and cosmetics on makeshift tables. Everything was much cheaper than retailers.
There was a reason for that: Almost everything for sale along those two blocks of Alvarado Street was stolen merchandise, snagged by clever thieves who knew that stealing in small amounts was a misdemeanor, and that would almost never land them in jail. They fenced the goods to the merchants, who marked them up a bit, paid a kickback to the local gangs and pocketed the profits.
And for the especially adventurous holiday shopper, many of the sellers offered an even more forbidden bit of merchandise. Some of the same vendors who displayed over-the-counter drugs on their tabletops were happy to reach beneath the stands and offer up opioids, cocaine, fentanyl or other illicit drugs…