The multicolored umbrellas protecting workers and their stainless steel fruit carts have marked Los Angeles’ street corners for over 30 years. Although they are mobile and impermanent, their everyday presence establishes them as an integral part of the city’s landscape. So much so that even the Los Angeles–based brewery Golden Road has recently developed wheat beers inspired by the city’s “iconic fruit cart vendors” with labels illustrating their place in the metropolis’ urban fabric. For instance, the mango ale can depicts a man wearing a mustache and a wide-brimmed hat cutting fruit behind a cart near passersby carrying surfboards. The can of melon-flavored ale shows a woman wearing hooped earrings and a red apron toiling in front of a cart with the city’s skyline behind her. Despite their ubiquity in Los Angeles’ public sphere, according to Rocío Rosales, very little is known about the city’s fruit cart vendors. To make...

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