With a San Diego city ordinance limiting street vending in shoreline parks, La Jollans say at least one seller is setting up on various corners and sidewalks throughout The Village, sometimes in front of businesses.
Ed Witt, board president of Enhance La Jolla — which isters the Maintenance Assessment District for The Village — said he recently saw the vendor operating at the corner of Girard Avenue and Prospect Street.
“I told them I didn’t think they weren’t supposed to be there and the man pointed his finger at me and was very defensive,” Witt said. He added that the vendor claimed to have a permit to operate there.
Sometimes a woman is at the table, Witt said, and when he asked her about the operation, she was “very aggressive.”
Witt said he believes vendors operating in front of businesses that pay rent for brick-and-mortar stores is “not fair.”
“It’s difficult to survive in this retail climate with the rents the way they are, so unfair and illegal competition should not be allowed,” he said.
The La Jolla Light could not find or the vendor during multiple visits to The Village. Witt said the vendor tends to change locations and has been seen along several different streets and intersections.
“We’re paying attention to it, but we’re not an enforcement agency, so there isn’t much we can do about it besides notify the city,” Witt said.
San Diego allows roaming and stationary vendors to use the public right of way or public property for sidewalk vending, provided the seller obtains a permit and obeys health and safety regulations. This includes the sale of art, food, clothing and souvenirs from a pushcart, pedal-driven cart, wagon, rack or another non-motorized method.
The 2022 ordinance does not allow a stationary or roaming sidewalk vendor to sell within 15 feet of any building entrance.
In La Jolla specifically, it aimed to block vending year-round at Scripps Park, the Children’s Pool, the Coast Boulevard boardwalk between Jenner and Cuvier streets, and on main thoroughfares at places such as the La Jolla Shores boardwalk. Vendors are allowed on the cross streets and side streets in those areas.
In February, the City Council amended the ordinance so that vendors with defined free-speech protections are allowed at shoreline parks such as Scripps Park, Kellogg Park and the Children’s Pool, but only on designated 4-by-8-foot pads called “expressive activity” zones. Among the activities deemed protected are political efforts, selling art the vendors made themselves, fortune telling, face painting, singing and street performing.
Tristyn Osborne, boutique manager at Benefit Cosmetics Boutique & BrowBar at 1001 Prospect St., said it has been “very frustrating” to see the vendor operating in front of the store.
“Customers get distracted or don’t want to walk past them,” Osborne said.
She also contended the vendor has been seen partially blocking the disabled-access ramp and setting up in the red no-parking zone.
La Jolla Village Merchants Association Executive Director Jodi Rudick declined to comment. ♦
