Street of Piñatas

Looking for a piñata, but not just any piñata? Check out the south side of Olympic Boulevard, just west of Central Avenue in the Warehouse District. A half-mile stretch of street there holds less than a dozen shops, but collectively they must offer one of the largest and most diverse selections of piñatas in the greater Los Angeles area.

I doubt there are many Angelenos who have never been to a birthday or Christmas party where the kids (including a few of the grown up ones) take blindfolded whacks with tall sticks at highly decorated papier-mâché containers full of candy. Kids seem to love it and it’s a great way to make sure things end with a bang.

Piñatas are most closely identified with the culture of Mexico, but a Web search yields varying and not always consistent accounts of their origin. Some say Marco Polo brought piñatas to Italy from China (pignatta in Italian means “fragile pot”). Their use subsequently migrated to Spain and, later, the New World. Other accounts propound an indigenous Central American origin. Still other stories tell of Chinese sailors bringing the custom to New Spain (Mexico) in the 15th Century.


But history is not high on the list of concerns for the families who come to the Warehouse District to buy piñatas -- variety is. On a recent visit, the traditional star-shaped piñatas were plentiful, but so were much more elaborate specimens. Disney and Pixar characters (recent and not-so-recent) seemed clear favorites (and "trademark infringement" has evidently been an issue at times).

Also available are toys (I don’t know where else in Los Angeles you can find “duck beak whistles,” “airplane kazoos” and “bright milky bouncing balls”), an incredible variety of candies, Mexican snack items, mesquite charcoal and 25-pound bags of raw peanuts. I suspect most of the stores began as fruit vendors, because they still carry an array of tropical fruits (cocoanuts, pineapples, mangoes, oranges, tangerines, bananas, chayote) and other fresh produce (tomatoes, peppers, chiles ) that seem to closely rival the piñatas as the focus of shopper attention. The morning we went, my wife carefully checked out the Ecuadorian mangoes before deciding they didn’t quite meet her strict Siamese standards. She and my daughter were delighted, however, to discover taro root and plaintains and we took several bags home.

Shopping on the “Street of Piñatas” is something of a party experience in itself. We went on a Sunday morning. The crowds were large and the air festive. Latin pop boomed from speakers. Vendors sold aguas frescas, tacos de carnitas, sopes, pupusas, and plump quesadillas dripping with cheese. The most popular items were elotes, huge ears of corn grilled over mesquite, then slathered with mayonnaise and spiced with lime juice and chile powder.

Well, why not? Shopping for piñatas may not be as arduous as making them yourself, but it nevertheless is a great way to work up an appetite.