Southside spotlight

After the Midtown Exchange project has been completed, and you have sampled the newest Starbucks, and checked out Sheraton’s inaugural $200 suite/massage/pool package, do not neglect the longtime businesses that have sustained central Lake Street for so many years. There will always be glitzy redevelopment going on somewhere in town, but to forsake the hidden bargains for marble tables and mirrored ceilings is to invite cultural tragedy.

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Five blocks west of the Midtown project, the Lake Street Market is a festival of noise. On a Sunday afternoon, a television is tuned to the local Spanish language station. The voice of Selena ricochets from the sound system as children, lights in their shoes flashing red and green, chase one another between tables. In front of the food stalls, families contemplate menus offering quesadillas, tortillas, and burritos. Down one hallway, you can find a hairdresser, a computer repair shop and a florist. Down the opposite hall, there is a bridal store, a music store, a lingerie shop and a five-and-ten. Inside a small joyería, couples examine necklaces and rings. At the back of the Market, the window of a Christian-themed bookstore is taped with advertisements for a recent shipment of CDs. A large shrine dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and surrounded by candles, looms over the food court.

Somali native Sahra Jama, her husband and her two nieces operate two fabric stalls at the Market. Her souk contains a dizzying array of carpets, blankets and curtains, hung in dual rows along the walls, and stacked in bags along the floor. Her offerings range from oblong Berber rugs, to Winnie the Pooh collectables, to Jacquard bedding. Her store has no fancy signage, no publicity, no slogan, and her advertising budget is zero, yet her business plan would make Dale Carnegie proud. “I work,” she says simply. She is in constant motion, jilbab flowing in her wake. Linguistic hurdles leave her unimpressed. “I know six languages. I learned Italian before I learned Somali, and I know Arabic, English, Swahili and a little Spanish. Not much Spanish,” she smiles, “but it is enough.”

Before she immigrated to the United States from a refugee camp in Kenya, she and her family spent much of their time avoiding the armed gangs that roamed Somalia after that country’s 1991 coup. Her eyes tear as she recalls one of the many nightmarish scenes she witnessed. “They want your rings, your bracelets, they do not ask,” she says. “They don’t wait; they cut off your fingers, your whole hand. It was bad, very bad.” Her husband preceded her to the United States, and after Mrs. Jama arrived in Kenya, she was able to arrange passage through a sponsorship program administered by Catholic Charities. Her immediate family—her brother and her parents—is still in Somalia, yet she is enthusiastic about life in Minnesota. “I like it here,” she says. “I have freedom. I’m not scared, I don’t have to block my door, I feel safe. No danger.”

Shopping at her stall is a hands-on experience. She greets her predominately Spanish-speaking female visitors with a warm smile and a “Hola, Amiga, como estás?” She is direct and gregarious, a reflection of her obvious delight with her new life. She rapidly sorts through a hodgepodge of fabrics, briskly unsealing bags, and encouraging customers to inspect, touch, feel and heft. She is not discouraged by rejection, accepting that many shoppers are young couples with tight budgets. People with more money to spend gravitate to places like the Mall of America or Rosedale. But Mrs. Jama is unconcerned; she long ago calculated the cost of staying in business. “I pay $1,200 rent every month,” she says, “so I have to sell.”

At the opposite end of the Market, near the Lake Street entrance, a steady stream of customers files into Viridiana’s Bakery. Paula and Alvaro Zuniga have been operating the Market’s only panaderia (named after the couple’s oldest daughter) for the last few years. While Señor Zuniga supervises the shop, Señora Zuniga works the register, assisted by their youngest daughter, Jessica. Service is of the help-yourself variety, and on this Sunday visitors bring heaping trays full of breads and pastries to the counter. Popular items include polvorones (cookies), empanadas de tostada (jelly-filled turnovers), and cuernos (glazed croissants). A customer speculatively eyes the empanadas de calabaza (pumpkin pockets) before snagging two generously-sized pineapple jelly muffins to go with a twelve-ounce cup of coffee. Total charge: $1.75. ¡Toma esto, Starbucks!

The Zunigas are from Morelos, just south of Mexico City, and three of many Morelense in the Twin Cities. Señora Zuniga’s sister, currently living in Chicago, preceded her North, a factor that mitigated slightly the family’s stressful decision to move. Yet even after two years, and the establishment of a popular business, Señora Zuniga acknowledged some mixed feelings. “There were a lot of doubts,” she wrote in response to an interviewer’s questions. “We were most affected by our [decision to] leave our roots, our traditions, but the biggest thing [was] leaving family.” Nor are the economic and material benefits of life in the United States necessarily enough to overcome other concerns. “If you have a job,” she wrote, “you have everything: food, clothes, fun, car.” But, she continued, “as an immigrant, people see you as a person who only comes here to create problems. They never see the good in it, what people bring with their jobs, with their small businesses.”

At some point, according to Señora Zuniga, the family will probably sell or transfer their business and return to Mexico. Will the decision be difficult? The Zunigas have made friends in the area, and Jessica, who speaks perfect English, is close to many of the children of other Market business owners. Señora Zuniga points to the wall above the front counter where there is arrayed a cross, a small tricolor, and a reproduction of a painting of Martin of Tours (an important figure in Hispanic Catholic iconography). “We have faith,” she says. One thing the family will be happy to leave behind, however, is Minnesota’s icy weather. “Winter here,” she wrote, “es muy frio.”

The Market is one of the few remaining enclaves of individualized commerce left along central Lake Street. A slightly poorer cousin to Mercado Central 10 blocks east, it is nonetheless possessed of a certain roughneck, untrammeled charm. In one shop, for example, baseball caps adorned with naughty slogans are shelved next to a rack of tupperware. But in a world of polished corporate boilerplate and facile marketing, its earthy simplicity is refreshing. Thank goodness for that.

The writer would like to thank Elaine Klaassen and Yael Gun for their translations.