This Pride month, we’re featuring queer couples who are making a difference on the Eastside. Through activism, art, business and more, these couples have found unique ways to give back to the communities they most identify with – all while being unapologetically in love.
Erika Crenshaw remembers the first day she met her partner Patricia Torres during a visit to Los Angeles.
“She made me a plate of home-cooked pollo con salsa verde with frijoles de la olla on the side and I never left,” Crenshaw said.
The couple eventually settled in El Sereno, where they learned how to grow fresh produce and build community while helping to steward the El Sereno Community Garden. Here they discovered a deep sense of connection over their love of food, one that would send them on a journey to help feed their Eastside community.
Today, the couple own and operate El Sereno Green Grocer, a locally-curated shop offering fresh produce and ethically-sourced cultural foods. Located on Huntington Drive, the shop’s bright green and orange storefront stands out among other minimarts in the area.
“Us being here, even in the name alone, it brings a sense of pride,” says Crenshaw. “It’s a beautiful place with lots of history. We try to uplift that history.”
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Crenshaw, a former educator who served in the Navy, was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. at a young age. Torres, whose parents hail from Mexico, was raised in the Bay Area and worked in the nonprofit world. Both are longtime activists organizing around the intersection of gender, race and sexuality throughout their various different careers, so it was important for them to weave that experience into the shop.
They do that by supporting small businesses and farms led or owned by BIPOC. On any given day, you can hear customers and staff talk about food justice and the cultural and historical significance of food as they shop for sweet treats from local El Aguila Bakery, vegetables from Chavez Family Farms or honey from Don Victor, the Honey Man of El Sereno. The store also offers customers the option to use EBT.
For Crenshaw and Torres, the shop is a place that provides food access for the neighborhood but also fosters community.
“As a daughter of immigrants, as someone whose parents were always out working, food was always a grounding force,” shared Torres. “My family somehow always had dinner together every night, even if it was canned food most of the time.”
We sat down with Crenshaw and Torres to talk about their journey towards establishing the grocery shop and how essential love is in all El Sereno Green Grocer does.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Can you tell me about how you two met and what role food plays in your relationship?
Crenshaw: When I stopped teaching, I decided to join the Navy. That summer I came to visit my family before bootcamp and I ended up hanging out with Erika. She invited me to lunch for a meal.
Torres: We started dating, and food’s always been a huge part of our relationship. Erika would always tell me she loved how every meal we shared together felt like a date.
Why is it important to have a place like this in El Sereno?
Crenshaw: I have a dear friend who is from El Sereno named Gina. She brought her mom to the shop to show her that this kind of a place existed in their neighborhood. When she left she told me, “Erika, thank you for doing this, we really needed this. Thank you.”
Someone else came in here with their child and thanked us for being a corner store with everything they remembered from their own childhood growing up. There’s a lot of feelings that food can evoke.
Torres: We’re a place that provides food access for the neighborhood. Deeper than that, we’re helping to foster community. We build relationships with people of all ages that walk through our doors. Everybody’s welcome here. It’s a place that actively prioritizes the community.
Can you tell me what role love plays in what El Sereno Green Grocer is?
Torres: It’s everything, it’s in all that we do and represent. Outside of what we sell we’re always advocating for love of the self, love of humanity, love for each other. There’s love in enjoying an avocado with lemon and salt. That’s love. A cherimoya, sliced and shared, can bring people together. That’s love.
As queer women of color, have you faced any challenges as business owners?
Torres: Structurally, banks would laugh at us when we’d go ask for money for this kind of a business as queer women of color with a lack of generational wealth. As people, we’re just not respected in the financial world.
Crenshaw: There’s just no financial education that’s really openly offered to people in our communities. Resources that are available, you have to really spend time looking for them. You can’t just wing it, you need to plan ahead.
Torres: Despite the many hurdles, we hope to see more queer-owned businesses and cooperatives with love at their core experimenting with their own businesses.
How has it been running a business together as a couple for the past year?
Crenshaw: It’s been great being able to see each other everyday and work with each other on a common goal. It’s been really helpful in working on our communication beyond just the personal and emotional, but also with it comes to being business partners. There’s been growth through the tough moments too.
Torres: I’ve loved it. We compliment each other very well. I feel that co-stewarding the community garden really helped prepare us for this. I’ve learned a lot from this experience. We both build community in different ways, so we both fill in each other’s gaps. We’re always checking in on each other on how we’re feeling. There’s nobody else I’d rather work with.
To learn more about El Sereno Green Grocer, check out their Instagram.
