Los Angeles's Indoor Swap Meet Boom and the Emergence of a Multiethnic Retailscape

Abstract

abstract:Indoor swap meets proliferated within metropolitan Los Angeles's rapidly diversifying inner suburbs throughout the 1980s and 1990s, transforming onetime retail and industrial buildings into multitenant vendor markets. Relying on architectural and programmatic theming to attract Latinx shoppers, many swap meet managers built market environments that resembled Mexican mercados and tianguis. While some urbanists have interpreted these markets as sites of "Latino Urbanism," their Korean ownership, large cohorts of Asian vendors and Black shoppers, and ties to Asian banking and garment industries complicate these narratives. Tracing the origins of this Korean-dominated business niche through case studies in Koreatown, Lynwood, South Los Angeles, and Anaheim, this article illustrates how shoppers and vendors used swap meets' non-White social environments to negotiate class and social differences. Rather than essentializing these market environments as "Latinx" spaces, this article argues that swap meets are better understood as fertile sites of material and social exchange across ethnic and class lines.