Turf war brawl. Underage girls working the streets. West Hollywood’s street vendor crisis has hit a breaking point

A West Hollywood business owner with a front-row view of the Rainbow District sent WEHOonline the videos Saturday night while the brawl was still unfolding outside their door. They didn’t send them because another fight between unlicensed street vendors was news. They sent them because they’re done waiting for someone to do something about it.

“It’s gotten progressively worse, and I think they are emboldened by realizing there’s no consequences to bad behavior,” one business owner said. “They keep pushing and pushing and pushing it.”

The fight, captured from multiple angles, showed two women going at each other at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and San Vicente just after midnight, their food carts left unattended on the sidewalk as the confrontation went to the ground.

The woman in the striped sweater, business owners said, was not a surprise.

“She’s no stranger to us. She’s flipped off my staff members before when they’ve asked her to move. She’s constantly getting into altercations with people on the street, with my security team, with my door hosts. We’ve had multiple, multiple issues with her in particular,” one said.

Larry Block, owner of Block Party WeHo, told KTLA Sunday the scene has become a fixture.

“The hot dog vendors have taken over the sidewalks, getting more aggressive. They’re here every weekend. They threaten business owners. If you ask them to move, it’s a really dangerous situation. I’ve asked them to move in front of my store.”

The brawl itself will be forgotten. Business owners along the boulevard say it always is. So will the threats against their staff, the grease dumped into street planters, and the laws broken openly every weekend by people who know nothing will happen to them. What they want addressed is the system that keeps producing all of it.

The Rules Apply to Some

Business owners laid out what frustrates them most. Every licensed venue on the boulevard operates under a thick stack of legal obligations. Health permits. Staff training on food handling. Training on how not to overserve alcohol. ABC licensing. Code compliance. They follow all of it.

“If I went on the street with a burning hot stove or something full of hot grease, I would get a call from the city within two seconds,” one business owner said. “The City is so proactive when it comes to training my staff. Yet there’s somebody standing right outside the street with zero training, dealing with fire and explosive gas tanks and boiling grease.”

The unlicensed vendors answer to none of it. Their hot dogs sit in the trunks of cars for hours. Their carts have previously burst into flames on the boulevard. Cooking grease gets dumped into street planters and onto the sidewalk at the end of the night, where it dries into a slip hazard. Vendor carts block exits that are supposed to remain clear. Wheelchairs can’t get through.

“It’s an accident waiting to happen in every sense of the word,” another said. “I’ve been working in nightlife for 20 years, and I’ve gotten very good at trying to fix problems before they happen. This is a massive problem for so many reasons.”

The dangers stack on top of each other in ways the City says it is unable to fully address, and that business owners say a council majority ignores for political gain. Minors turned away at club doors don’t leave. They remain outside, where illegal liquor is often being sold alongside the food.

“You have minors that get turned away from clubs that can hang out on the corner and buy drinks off illegal vendors,” one said. “These fights are not spilling out from the clubs. They’re happening on the street because there are unregulated environments where people are just hanging out eating and drinking.”

Adam Eramian, operations manager at Micky’s West Hollywood, has watched the same scene develop from his door for nearly 25 years.

“They create a horseshoe in front of Mickey’s,” Eramian said. “Around 1:30, 2 o’clock in the morning. So when my customers are trying to exit Mickey’s, they’re bombarded by hot dog vendors. They’re blocking the exit. They’re blocking the emergency exit. My customers cannot get out without being harassed.”

The 14-Year-Old

On Saturday night, a girl was working a vendor cart in the Rainbow District. WEHOonline obtained video of her identifying herself on camera as 14 years old. Business owners said their own staff had an identical encounter the same night.

“I have video of a girl working at 2:30 in the morning, and one of my dancers asked her, how old are you,” one said. “And she said, I just turned 14. We have a city that’s supposedly so concerned about workers’ rights, and we have 14-year-olds working the streets at 2:30 in the morning.”

Under California law, minors aged 14 and 15 may not work past 9 p.m. even during summer months. During the school year, the restrictions are tighter. A 14-year-old working past midnight in May violates state child labor law on its face. There is no indication anyone involved holds the work permit California requires for minors.

West Hollywood has some of the most progressive worker protection ordinances in the state. Minimum wage floors. Tenant protections. Worker rights. The City enforces them aggressively. The City Council can no longer say it didn’t know about the 14-year-old.

Who’s Really Behind This

Business owners said the vendor operations are not what they appear to be.

“A lot of them don’t even take cash anymore,” one said. “All of their Venmos, their PayPals, their Zelles go to the same place. So where is this money going? Who’s in charge? That’s the question that needs to be looked at.”

Their security teams deal with what they call enforcers on a weekly basis. Whenever staff asks vendors to step back from the entrance, a man appears claiming to represent them.

“He says he’s their private security,” one said. “Don’t talk to them. You can’t tell them what to do. This is a public street. So yeah, we’ve dealt with what they call the enforcers multiple times.”

Those individuals have made threatening gestures toward staff.

“The whole purpose of those people being there is to make people feel threatened,” another said. “To intimidate. That’s their purpose.”

Business owners said the people working the carts are not independent operators making a living.

“This has nothing to do with immigration. This has nothing to do with people having the right to make a living and start their own small businesses,” one said. “This is exploitation on every level, including of the people who are actually selling these hot dogs.”

The Enforcement Wall

The City’s hands were tied by SB 946 — the Safe Sidewalk Vending Act, signed into law in 2018 and effective January 1, 2019. Codified under Government Code Section 51036, it stripped cities of the ability to issue criminal penalties or demand identification from unpermitted vendors, limiting enforcement to administrative fines only. In 2022, SB 972 added another layer of protection, removing criminal penalties even for health code violations. In October 2025, Governor Newsom signed SB 635, tightening vendor privacy protections further still.

Danny Rivas, the City’s director of community safety, told the April 28 Public Safety Commission that the reality on the ground reflects exactly that.

“Most folks aren’t concerned about their credit score being impacted,” Rivas said.

“A lot of the unpermitted street vendors are very well versed when it comes to state law,” Rivas said. “They will video our code enforcement officers. They will video our sheriff’s deputies all the time.”

The City has run coordinated enforcement operations since January. Rivas said he and Lt. Ashley Turner have personally been out until 4 a.m. during those operations.

It doesn’t hold.

“The minute that team pulls in or takes a break, they’re right back out there,” Rivas said.

Business owners watched it happen in real time just this past Friday.

“The sheriffs were on the corner on Friday night because of all these fights,” one said. “And the hot dog vendors were there vending right in front of them. Because the sheriff can’t do anything.”

Eramian said the security ambassador program, while useful for smaller quality-of-life calls, isn’t built for what’s happening after midnight.

“They observe and report. That’s all they do,” Eramian said. “They’re not a replacement for sheriff’s deputies. No one is going to replace a deputy.”

Yet the same state framework that limits what the City can do on vending does not limit what it can do on several other fronts. Unlicensed alcohol sales remain a criminal matter under state law. California law makes it illegal for a 14-year-old to work past 9 p.m. The ADA — which SB 946 itself requires vendors to comply with — prohibits blocking sidewalk access. Propane tanks and open flames fall under fire codes with their own enforcement authority. None of those require a change in state law.

The Council’s Choice

Designated vendor zones do not require a change in state law. They require a vote. The City has not taken one.

A council item that could have moved toward a solution was pulled before it came to a vote. Business owners said Councilmember Danny Hang brought the item forward. Councilmembers Lauren Meister and John Heilman appeared ready to vote in favor. But when Meister had to leave the meeting, Hang took it off the table.

“John Erickson and Chelsea Byers were very vocally opposed to even looking at how to correct this issue,” one business owner said.

WEHOonline previously reported that Erickson works for Alliance for a Better Community, an organization that supported SB 635, a state law expanding protections for sidewalk vendors. He did not recuse himself from the matter.

City Attorney Lauren Langer said Erickson did not have a disqualifying conflict of interest under California law because he was not involved in the organization’s policy decision to support SB 635 and did not have a financial interest tied to the outcome.

Business owners described a council exchange in which Erickson questioned what time venues stop serving food, framing the vendors as providing a public service. When business owners pushed back, Erickson’s response was that the venues make enough money.

“I have never tried, nor will I ever make money off selling food,” one said. “I am not running a restaurant. The fact that he thinks that’s what this is about shows me he’s completely out of touch with what business owners are actually dealing with in this city.”

Business owners said framing any opposition to the vendor operations as anti-immigrant obscures what is actually happening on the street.

“This has nothing to do with immigration. This has nothing to do with people having the right to make a living,” one said. “If they actually had a common sense solution, where vendors got to operate as individuals within a proper zone with proper rules, and they got to keep the money, they’d work once a week instead of working like slaves and make the same amount of money. We’d actually be helping people. But this isn’t about helping people.”

Eramian reached the same conclusion.

“The council majority really doesn’t care, in my opinion,” Eramian said. “I don’t think they care, because if they cared, something would have been done by now. They’re more concerned about developers than the local businesses.”

Business owners said Hang convened a meeting of all nightlife operators in the area. Every single club showed up. They had not seen that in 20 years.

“They all said the same thing,” one said. “West Hollywood right now has a big PR issue. And the PR issue is not what’s happening inside the venues. It’s what’s happening outside the venues.”

What They Want

The ask is not complicated. Business owners called for designated vendor zones with basic regulatory requirements attached.

“If they put some sort of white line on the sidewalk and had a couple of designated vendor zones, and the vendors had to go through some basic safety and food handling training,” one said. “The City is so proactive when it comes to training my staff. Yet there’s somebody standing right outside the street with zero training, dealing with fire and explosive gas tanks and boiling grease.”

Another said a lottery or bidding system could benefit the vendors themselves.

“If they had a common sense solution where vendors got to operate as individuals within a proper zone with proper rules, and they got to keep the money,” they said, “they’d work once a week instead of working like slaves and make the same amount of money. We’d actually be helping people. But this isn’t about helping people.”

Eramian said it doesn’t require a state law change. It requires a decision.

“Designate an area,” Eramian said. “You could tell them you can sell hot dogs, but you’ve got to be on Santa Monica and Larabee. And then you could have a spot at Robertson and Santa Monica. Vendors can openly and freely sell their products without interfering with local businesses and without harassing our customers.”

He said he’s not unsympathetic to where the vendors are coming from.

“My family are immigrants. I’m first generation here,” Eramian said. “I understand they come here to make money, to make a better life. But let’s make a policy where we’re all safe.”

No more excuses. No more looking the other way. Adam Eramian, operations manager at Mickey’s West Hollywood for nearly 25 years, said it plainly. “We need to make West Hollywood safe again.”

Rivas told commissioners two weeks ago that West Hollywood is not dealing with a local problem.

“Until there is some change that occurs at the state level,” Rivas said, “it’s just gonna continue to be very, very difficult.”

The Public Safety Commission meets tonight at West Hollywood City Hall.

Of all the business owners WEHOonline contacted, only one agreed to speak on the record by name. The rest declined or spoke only without attribution. The reason was the same in every case: fear of retaliation — from certain City Council members. Business owners who employ West Hollywood residents, pay taxes, and generate the revenue that funds the very City they operate in. Unwilling to attach their names to legitimate public safety concerns about their own streets. They shared one more frustration: the unlicensed vendors operating outside every rule appear to have more protections in this city than the licensed businesses following every one of them. That is a story in itself.

A business owner who spoke to WEHOonline was direct about the current council majority. They don’t “give a shit” about local businesses, they said. They’re looking for the next headline, the next hot button issue to exploit. “There’s no winners here,” they said. “Except for the politicians.”