At the Skid Row People’s Market, customers can buy a bit of everything – fresh produce, socks, duct tape. But the store’s motto, painted high above a cold case, offers the Skid Row community something a little harder to find: a “safe space to heal.”
Danny Park runs the market, which his parents bought 29 years ago, with a social justice bent. Now he’s preparing to exit the family business and planning to preserve the focus on community service.
Instead of seeking out the highest bidder, Park worked out a deal with Creating Justice LA, a Black-led nonprofit that serves local residents and the unhoused on Skid Row.
The nonprofit will continue to operate it as an affordable neighborhood market. There are no big grocery store chains in the area, and few corner stores offer fresh produce and ready-to-eat packaged meals like the People’s Market. And after receiving public input, the nonprofit will add new community services at the market.
For Park, the sale of this store feels like a step toward healing the historic tensions between the Korean American and Black communities in LA.
“Skid Row is predominantly Black. And residents who live in a neighborhood should rightfully have some control over the institutions that serve the neighborhood,” says Park, who announced the deal on Instagram in December.
A balloon sign that hangs above one of the cold cases at the Skid Row People’s Market reflects the store’s social justice mission. Photo by Megan Jamerson/KCRW.
The story of the Park family business begins when Danny Park’s parents, May and Bob Park, bought the corner store at the intersection of 5th Street and San Pedro Street in 1995, which was then called Best Market.
It was a difficult time for Korean Americans to own small businesses in Black neighborhoods in the aftermath of the 1992 civil unrest. Before the market, Park’s parents had to file for bankruptcy after their screen-printing business failed.
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When Danny Park joined the family business in 2015, he renamed it the Skid Row People’s Market. Park’s friend and mentor, Pastor Stephen “Cue” JnMarie, says he saw Park face historic racial tensions with honesty. And JnMarie, who is Black, says he saw Park flip the stereotypical narrative that Korean Americans extract wealth from Black communities through their small businesses without putting anything back into the neighborhood.
“Danny [Park] is not just someone who profited from the community,” says JnMarie. “I think once he took over, he led his family to really understand what the community has been going through, and the trials that the community has gone through.”
Park, his mother, and their employees make a point of treating customers with kindness.
One recent afternoon, a woman came by to pick up her cell phone after Park let her charge it. Another employee offered customers assistance carrying their baskets around. It’s also not unusual for them to allow people to hang out without shopping, instead of discouraging loitering. Two unhoused men sat out on stools inside the store until it closed.
“It's a wonderful store. A lot of nice people. I like the vibe,” says a local who goes by the name Righteous Awareness as he purchased a bag of Sun Chips and a pear. For the last five years, he’s bought something from the store nearly every day.
Danny Park says last year’s decision to sell the store was difficult, but the timing was right. His mother, who is 69, wants to retire. And Park says the stress of running the store and trying to be a good community steward is taking a toll on him.
“I came to the realization that the best thing to do is: I need to take care of myself,” he tells KCRW.
Unsurprisingly, he expects it will take time to get used to it after the store has been the center of his family’s life for so long. “What am I going to talk to my mom about now?” he asked with a laugh.
After deciding to sell, Park’s first phone call was to JnMarie, who Park told he wanted a community member to take over the store.
“I understood exactly what he meant,” says JnMarie. “He wanted to continue that legacy of taking care of the community.”
Park says this was important because of what the community had given his family, including putting food on their table, the ability to purchase their first home, and paying college tuition for him and his sister.
About a week after their first phone call, JnMarie came back to Park with a proposal for Creating Justice LA to acquire the business.
JnMarie says the mission of the market and Creating Justice LA are aligned over fostering social and economic health for the people of Skid Row. The nonprofit’s recent projects include a worker-owned co-op called the Hip Hop Smoothie Shop, and running community programming at the Peace and Healing Center in Skid Row.
Park, who sits on the nonprofit’s board, agreed this would help to ensure the store could continue its mission.
“It's a beautiful, unexpected kind of thing. It’s really awesome,” says Park.
The symbolism of a second-generation Korean American-owned store being sold to a Black-led nonprofit is not lost on JnMarie: “I think it's a step towards healing, and a step to build outside of the regular narrative,” he tells KCRW.
The handover of the store will take up to three months, says JnMarie. In the meantime, the nonprofit will also be kicking off a fundraising campaign on January 10, and some of those funds will go toward the purchase of the store.
For Park, once everything is passed on, he will be taking time to rest, reflect, and get married. And at age 39, he will also need to figure out a new source of income, one he hopes involves continuing advocacy work in Downtown LA.
And while the Park family will no longer be in charge at the Skid Row People’s Market, he says he hopes their story can be a source of inspiration to others.
“That would be a great privilege,” he says.