Southern California night markets need bill that cuts red tape

Night markets, based on cool food hall-based outdoor events in Taipei and Hong Kong, have hit it big over the last decade in Southern California, welcome open-air happenings for all ages that have changed the strolling and dining culture of our region.

626 Night Market in the San Gabriel Valley, home to the Southland’s largest Asian-American population, has boomed, and this weekend will curate the food booths at the huge Head in the Clouds Asian concert event at Brookside at the Rose Bowl, featuring fancifully named cult favorites All Dat Dumpling, Ghostix, Shake Ramen, Supreme Musubi, Tao’s Bao, Bopomofo Cafe and The Drunken Dumpling. Its Boba Village includes Bobaful, Milk + Tea, Factory Tea Bear and others. Little Saigon Night Market is in Westminster’s Asian Garden Mall, and the 626 Night Market also draws crowds in Costa Mesa.

The problem for organizers of these pleasant nights on the town have been the ordinary, annoying roadblocks California municipalities traditionally throw up for anyone trying to do … anything … in public.

Ever, for instance, tried to plan a festival in a local city park — open spaces nominally owned by the citizens? The Fire Department, the Police Department, the local traffic and parking officials are going to make out like bureaucratic bandits if you do, and, along with the baffling paperwork, you’re going to have to fork out often amazingly big bucks to use the public space you thought was yours.

That’s why we like the proposed legislation from Bay Area Assemblymember Matt Haney that, in the words of Southern California News Group staffer Hanna Kang, “would create a specific yearlong state permit for organizers of open-air vendors, such as farmers and night markets.”

“There’s no constituency in California calling for more red tape and paperwork for farmers markets,” said Haney. “Hopefully, this legislation will inspire other communities across California to explore opening up their own night markets.”

The bill, as KQED in San Francisco reports, “would streamline the permitting process to make it easier to have multiple night markets per year. Currently, no specific permit exists for farmers markets or night markets in the state, so operators typically have to apply for an events permit multiple times a year. That can cost thousands of dollars per year to apply over and over again — and Haney said it is a deterrent to opening lively, pop-up merchant corridors that have the potential to bring people out and together.”

Along with the night markets, the bill would apply to the farmers markets so many of us enjoy getting our locally sourced produce from.

“There are few things people love more than their farmers markets. It’s a source of joy, they pick up their produce, meet friends. And unfortunately, the state makes it hard to open a farmers market,” Haney told KQED. “We want people selling food and bringing people together in community, including in the evenings.”

During the decades-long dispute that roiled the state before COVID-19 lockdowns as food trucks formerly dubbed roach coaches went gourmet and some bricks-and-mortar restaurants cried foul, it was often asserted that the new trend was unfair to restaurateurs, who had to pay fixed costs of rent or mortgages and property taxes. But KQED notes that in today’s food climate, “some of the pop-up vendors that are eager to be a part of the event are restaurants that previously had storefronts, but were forced to close during the pandemic. Since then, these businesses have turned to creative ways to keep their business afloat.”

Night markets are very much among those creative ways. California cities and counties need to encourage more of them rather than rolling out the red tape to tie them up. Haney’s bill, AB 441, which is being introduced as an urgent item and would become law as soon as the governor signs it, is an example of good governance indeed.