Once a month, Carmen Rendón unfolds her rusted and rickety wire pushcart and walks the 30 or so blocks to the Northgate Gonzalez supermarket three miles southeast of her Sherman Heights home.
She pushes her cart slowly past the gritty convenience marts and fast food restaurants that provide the backdrop along National Avenue, stopping at each intersection to stabilize the cart with her free hand to prevent it from collapsing as she lowers it from the sidewalk into the street. She descends a long slope that leads her to the Chollas Creek bridge, passes beneath Interstate 15 and emerges to climb the upward slope on the other side, with more than a mile left to go.
"We're humble people," Rendón said one recent blistering afternoon, as she and her friend Berta Juarez towed their carts up Sampson Street in Barrio Logan. "I usually don't have money for the bus. It takes me more than an hour to walk."
Rendón's monthly ritual is not uncommon in this part of the city, an area where physical and geographic barriers often contribute as much as market forces and personal finances to limiting low-income residents' access to nutritious food. READ FULL STORY
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