Ramos’ newsstand remains one of the largest in L.A. “You’re there, surrounded by the day’s news as people are learning everything,” he said. The worst tragedies seemed to bring the most customers to his stand: when Luis Donaldo Colosio, a Mexican presidential candidate, was assassinated at a campaign rally in Tijuana when superstar entertainer Jenni Rivera was killed in a plane crash when the singer Selena was shot to death by one of her employees. Dozens of copies of the Los Angeles Times - one of the few English-only offerings - would once fly away in a day. Now he stocks just 10 and will sell four or five in a day, Ramos said. Every day, he’d sell up to 40 copies of the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión. “So, he convinced me, and I bought it,” Ramos said. He felt the creep of age and thought he could make a go of the newspaper business. Ramos had grown tired of the physical strain of his work as a mechanic. For their children or their children’s children, the pages of Mexican news publications such as La Jornada and Proceso or Spanish-language gossip magazines hold little allure. Ramos’ customers are almost entirely elderly immigrants. The 71-year-old Highland Park resident has owned the newsstand for 25 years, but like the rest of the publishing business, it’s been hit hard by a digital revolution that has seduced the eyes of the young away from print. Puros quinceañeros,” Ramos joked with bemused resignation. “They don’t want to give me a magazine,” Chipres said, feigning disappointment before strolling away. But even if she was one of Ramos’ regulars, she wasn’t going to spend a dime. The 75-year-old likes to know the world’s chisme, she said. #BEST CROSSWORDS IN NEWSTAND MAGAZINE TV#Margarita Chipres walked up and thumbed through a copy of TV Notas, a gossip magazine about Latino celebrities. Hours could go by without a sale, so Ramos mostly waited. Pedestrians walked past the newsstand, crossing the street toward the Metro Gold Line station. Over the buzz of traffic at the corner of 1st and Soto streets, he chatted with his lone employee. La settimana enigmistica is the best crosswords magazine. Above, a faded green awning proclaimed: ALL KINDS OF SPANISH MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS. Everywhere like Tabacchi, train stations with newstands, etc. Rafael Ramos stood at his Boyle Heights newsstand on a sunny morning.
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