Swap meets, or flea markets, have in recent times enjoyed a reputation as a place where one can find a good deal on collectibles, art, and antiques. Thanks to television programs like Antiques Roadshow, swap meets have become a kind of high-end retailer in outdoor markets. The recession has not only changed that, but also drawn attention to the flexibility of swap meets and open air markets generally.

Last week Los Angeles' public television station, KCET, broadcast a story on swap meets as part of its program, "SoCal Connected." Here's the link: http://kcet.org/socal/2008/12/thrift-economy.html

KCET Producer Vicki Curry told the story of how swap meets are feeling the effects of the economic downturn. People who have lost jobs have cut back on many things, including making payments for storage units, packed to the brim with goods purchased during good times. Units on which rent is not paid are subject to "foreclosure" by the storage unit facility. The units are opened and the contents auctioned to eager buyers. These buyers turn around to resell the items on ebay, at garage sales, and swap meets. These merchants of second hand goods have their finger on the economic pulse of America. High end merchandise is not moving much. Low end necessities are.

News media stories report that a decline in construction activity across the US has made life for day laborers, which was already hard in good times, even harder still. Many laborers have hit the road, going to places like Texas, that have not felt quite so much pain as the rest of the country. This mobility of day labor is nothing new-- it is one example of the flexibility of day labor, which helps explain its persistence as a labor market phenomenon.

But this mobility also highlights the difficulty of organizing day laborers to enable them to protect their common interests. Claims by individual day laborers that an employer has underpaid him or failed to pay him at all are sometimes abandoned. The stakes are too low to make it economic for an attorney to be hired to file suit. If an employer mistreats a number of day laborers in this way, the stakes are much higher. One attorney might represent a number of day laborers against a single defendant, and the higher stakes would justify the costs of hiring an attorney to take on this "collective action" or "class action."

Shipping containers are more likely to conjure the image of an endless supply of toy s and trinkets for the big-box isles than of open air markets and micro-enterprise. But the fairly standard size and durable steal structure make containers ideal for open air vendor kiosks. They are highly transportable, cheap, and because you are re-using an existing steal structure as opposed to requiring the mining and smelting of new steal, they are green. Shipping containers are made of durable steal so they can be loaded with any type of solid material, stacked nine high, and exposed to the harsh climates of the open ocean. Re-cycling these containers has long been the work of scrap metal experts and the occasional green builder. However, one of the most interesting new uses might be kiosk conversions. Because the United States has had a massive import/export deficit over the past few decades we have hundreds of thousands of abandoned containers stacked in ports around the country. Companies tend to abandon containers after 8-10 years of service because they can no longer depreciate their value.

Food grown is useless without a place to sell it and street or public markets of every type are where we should find food for sale to please every palate.

Content from the recent conference is now available including comprehensive notes from every session, photos, and video. Please see: https://www.growingfoodandjustice.org/

Last night I attended a community forum put on by a group of taco truck operators in East Los Angeles. The group calls itself "La Asociación de Loncheros L.A. Familia Unida de CA." The forum was part food festival. Free fare was reason enough to come. I helped myself to seafood tostadas served up by "Mariscos Coliman," a truck that regularly does business on East Manchester between Juniper and Alameda, in an unincorporated part of LA county just west of South Gate. With plenty of lime juice, green onion, and just the right amount of tomatillo sauce, the tostadas were delicious.

The forum was about more than just giving away food. It was also about raising awareness of the positive contribution taco trucks make to our community and others across the state of California. Earlier this year, the County of Los Angeles tried to implement a new ordinance tough prohibitions against the operation of taco trucks. Fortunately, when the county sought to enforce it, the superior court of Los Angeles held the prohibitory ordinance to be invalid. One hopes that the County has seen the light and will let the trucks operate in peace, but one can't rely on hope alone.