In L.A.'s Little Tokyo, days of protests upend life and business

Los Angeles Times

a day ago

Roberto Recinos, a 21-year-old downtown Los Angeles resident, works at It's Boba Time right by the Metropolitan Detention Center, where protests have been going on for six days.
Recinos said the demonstrations and curfew had resulted in far less foot traffic in recent days. By 2 p.m, the shop usually would have sold around 120 drinks, but on Wednesday, fewer than 40 had been sold.
'It's been dead,' he added.
Recinos hasn't attended any of the protests and said he had mixed feelings about what had been going on but that he supported the cause.
It's been a surreal week for those who live and work in the Civic Center area, as peaceful protests, clashes with police and vandalism have erupted since Friday night.
Many say they support the protests but note it's hurt business. The vandalism is another matter. The new curfew imposed around downtown has added another lay of complexity.
Recinos said his store had been closing earlier, at 7:30 p.m. instead of 10 p.m., so that everyone could get home before the curfew.
'If they're doing the curfew to circumvent people going out to protest, it's kinda doing its job for me,' he said.
Even though everyone in his family is documented, Recinos, who comes from Mexican immigrants, said he'd had to be more careful going outside during the ICE raids.
'Even though I am lighter-skinned and am technically white passing, my mom is scared I could get detained,' he said.
Ken, who declined to give his last name, has worked as a sales associate at Bunkado, a knickknack shop in Little Tokyo, for several years. He said the store had been affected by the protests as foot traffic had dropped in the past week.
The exterior of the storefront was also vandalized with graffiti.
Ken said he supported the curfew but noted that the store usually closed at 6 p.m. anyway. Still, they've been closing an hour earlier this week due to the demonstrations.
'I don't care for the people who come at night who do the vandalizing,' he said. 'I don't think they're really part of the protest. They're just vandalizing because they're upset.'
Ken said he was concerned that the curfew could result in events in the area being canceled, or mayhem after Dodgers games if people have to leave by 8 p.m.
He said he felt sorry for owners of the businesses in the area that been burglarized or vandalized. He said the anime store near the Japanese Village Plaza was vandalized and boarded up.
Uribe Lazo lives in South Los Angeles but decided to take his dog for a walk downtown by the Metropolitan Detention Center around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to survey the graffiti and aftermath of days of protests.
Lazo hasn't been participating in the protests, instead monitoring the demonstrations from home. He said it looked like the curfew had been effective in curtailing the worst of the violence Tuesday night.
'It looked like they had things under control,' he said. 'They weren't letting people get rowdy.
Lazo, who noted that he'd worked as an office assistant and paralegal for immigration law, said he could understand the protesters' side as well as that of law enforcement. He said he'd helped people fill out forms as they applied for citizenship and tried to bring in their relatives from other countries.
Lazo is the first-generation son of El Salvadoran immigrants
'I'm not worried about being undocumented — but ... they can stop me and ask if I'm from here,' he said. 'I'm conflicted in my mind because I understand the plight of people coming here undocumented because that's probably their only resource. It's either that or starve to death wherever they live.'