Is Santee Alley L.A.’s most fashion-forward shopping strip?
In fact, Santee may be the most mysterious three blocks of public activity in the city. It is known as a twilight economy, an all-cash engine fueled by the largest assemblage of counterfeit fashion merchandise in the country. At the moment, the handbag in highest demand there is a fake Coach, but you can find bogus goods with the names Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Rolex, Levi’s, and Gucci. Santee is also famous for its knockoff fashions—a jacket that’s a dead ringer for the latest from Marc Jacobs or a dress that’s nearly identical to a summer style by Diane von Furstenberg. Store owners from the Philippines and Saudi Arabia fly into LAX empty-handed, purchase several suitcases at one of the alley’s many luggage shops, stuff the cases with counterfeit Prada sunglasses and Rolex watches, and then fly home, where they claim the merchandise as their personal belongings to avoid duty fees.
Most visitors, however, are local. The majority are Latino immigrants and their families, but you will see German tourists, Highland Park slackers, even Beverly Hills matrons who tour the area in limousines. Women in their twenties shop the alley because it is as important and exciting as Melrose Place on Black Friday. On a recent afternoon my girlfriend Alexandra and I were browsing the shop of an Egyptian named Mustafa, who was in a business transaction with a Korean wholesaler that was quickly going south. Mustafa is large and middle-aged, with soft, almost vulnerable eyes. His close-shaved head exhibits a sheen in the sunlight, like a religious dome, and he wears rectangular Dolce & Gabbana frames that build structure into his moon-shaped face.
“What about the $9 you already owe me?” Mustafa questioned his wholesaler. Four boxes had just arrived, and the Korean was trying to explain the bill, which was for $472.
“I do not owe you $9,” answered Mustafa’s visitor, looking affronted.
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I do not.”
While the two bickered, an assistant of Mustafa’s would occasionally pop over to slip a pair of sunglasses onto the Korean, whose red, blotchy face seemed to get a lot of sun. Yet every time he glanced in the mirror, he’d return the frames. “My head is too big and ugly for sunglasses,” he said.
As with a lot of shop owners on the alley, Mustafa works seven days a week, often from eight in the morning to eight at night. Because of the alley’s foot traffic, Santee’s rents can exceed those of Beverly Hills, running as high as $15,000 a month. Mustafa’s shop, which is found immediately north of the corner of 12th Street, sits on the busiest and most expensive block. Five thousand dollars a month will get just 300 square feet. South of 12th, on Santee’s least expensive block, the same amount can secure 1,500 square feet. Landlords squeeze their properties for income—from one original business, the building that houses Mustafa’s store has been divided into 33 rental spaces—and so shop owners, in turn, must squeeze their own walls. Competition for space is fierce, and fistfights have broken out over a single contested inch. The alley looks like a retail district, but a fifth of the profits in shops is earned from sales to wholesale buyers, who take merchandise to sell in their own stores.
Shops like Mustafa’s buy from 30, 40, even 50 manufacturers a month to keep their shelves and tables stocked with everything from blouses to CDs to fake beer cans where you can hide your pot. Mustafa sells handbags, backpacks, blankets, luggage, and sunglasses. He named his shop Moose because it is his nickname and because he has always loved animals. Its sign is a drawing of a moose’s head in profile, one you might see hanging above the entrance of a rural fraternity lodge.
Merchants on the alley are famously tight-lipped. “Even I don’t know what goes on down there,” told us Elisa Mermelstein Keller, whose family has owned buildings on the alley since the ’70s. Keller thought the odds were against locating someone to speak to me. “Because of the paranoia,” she said, “no shop owner will tell you the story of the alley.” Then I met an LAPD officer , who has patrolled the alley for two decades. He recommended Mustafa to me as being an aboveboard businessman, vouching for his trustworthiness. After a 20-minute negotiation that covered such topics as why I would want to talk to him, why he would want to talk to me, where and when he could talk to me, and whom he might find to talk to me instead, Mustafa and I finally agreed to sit down at a nearby Starbucks. But first he needed to settle the $9 debt.
“OK,” said the Korean wearily. “I owe you $9. The bill is actually $481.”
“No,” said Mustafa. “It is $463.”
“Exactly,” said the wholesaler, smiling as if the idea were his all along.
Finally, I got to learn more about The Santee Alley from a great source!!!!!!
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