Wilkinson was stunned. Not so much at the notice, which is always a possibility for tenants like her who don’t have long-term lease agreements and pay month to month. It’s the fact that she hasn’t been able to talk directly to the property owner about the notice. In it the owner cited the need to make repairs to the aging building as the reason for wanting her out, but Wilkinson had more questions. The lack of communication over weeks was puzzling, then frustrating, not least because Sika himself always had good relations with the landlord. “The rent is paid, what’s the deal?” said the 39-year-old Wilkinson, who grew up around the shop and, since 2017, has run the business operations. 

The kicker is that the landlord — the “they” — is assumed to be Mark Bradford. Bradford, 62, is the world-renowned artist and L.A. native who has deep roots in Leimert Park and for nearly a decade has made very public commitments to elevating the Black arts scene there. That commitment includes acquiring property for galleries, educational spaces for youth and the like.

While the ambition has been almost universally lauded, it’s the string of acquisitions that’s made longtime merchants uneasy over the years, and has become now a sticking point for Wilkinson. Bradford hasn’t helped himself by keeping a very low profile; an imposing 6 foot 8 inches tall, he is rarely seen fraternizing on a small block where everybody knows each other. More concerning to merchants is the fact that he’s always been reticent to say what properties he actually owns. For someone from the neighborhood claiming to care about the community, such a low profile is unconscionable, especially now as gentrification in Leimert approaches a serious tipping point.   

To some in the village, Bradford is another indifferent landlord hastening Black displacement, using his local boy/art superstar status as a cover. Bradford’s approach to real estate is “marked by secrecy and lack of collaboration,” read an August letter circulated by the grassroots group Africa Town Coalition, which along with the letter shared a photo of Sika lounging in the doorway of his shop. “The group’s decisions seem to prioritize their own vision for the neighborhood, at the expense of local small businesses.” The bottom line is that in Leimert Park, business is always personal. 

Bradford’s rags-to-riches story that evolved into a giving-back story is worthy of Hollywood. Growing up, he worked in his mother’s hair salon on Leimert Boulevard around the corner from the village. He was an average student, and his art career didn’t get under way until he was 30, after he won a scholarship to California Institute of the Arts. His large-scale abstractions, which often comment on race and social realities, have been exhibited everywhere, including a permanent work at LAX.

In 2015 Bradford, along with the philanthropist Eileen Harris Norton and his partner Allan DiCastro, founded Art + Practice, a revamped art deco storefront combining gallery space for emerging Black artists with education for foster youth, in Leimert Park village. Suddenly the area was on the map of institutions like the Hammer Museum, which has a long association with Bradford. One of the first artists in residence at Art + Practice was Dale Davis, a Leimert Park originator: It was he and his brother Alonzo who opened the Brockman Gallery on Degnan in 1967 and launched the whole scene, with its distinct tradition of “for us by us.” 

But the Hollywood story has always been undercut by the shadowy and often cutthroat business of property ownership. Public records show that a limited liability corporation, MBA Mascot LLC, bought properties along Degnan Boulevard — including Sika’s — in 2013, shortly after the MTA announced the construction of a Leimert Park Village stop along the new Crenshaw line (the stop opened in 2022). The LLC’s managing partner was Allan DiCastro. Assuming Bradford was the owner, Dwight Trible of the World Stage, a legendary jazz spot on Degnan, asked for a sit-down with the artist to negotiate a new lease, to talk “artist to artist,” as he told the arts publication Momus. He was refused, and the Stage eventually moved across the street to a new location.

When another venerable Degnan business, Zambezi Bazaar, closed its doors in 2014, Art + Practice opened its office there. Bradford offered the space to Eso Won Books, yet another flagship Leimert store located across the street, in a move that was highly anticipated. But the deal fell apart and, in 2022, Eso Won closed for good. The brewing consternation about Bradford’s property footprint seems acknowledged in a disclaimer on A+P’s website: “A+P is a proud member of the Leimert Park neighborhood; however, our nonprofit organization does not own any of the buildings in which we operate,” it reads. “Real estate-related inquiries will be directed to the property management company.” Calls to that management company, Clint Lukens Realty, were not returned.

While much of Leimert’s struggle over decades has been economic and not Bradford’s doing,  there remains room for grievance. Ben Caldwell runs the multimedia center Kaos Network, one of the few tenants in the village who also owns their building. Caldwell knows Bradford, whom he taught as a student at CalArts. As a fellow property owner he has seen how tenants, many of them renting month to month like Wilkinson, are continually anxious about who and what controls the direction of Leimert Park. But he said Bradford is not the enemy. “Mark chose to locate in Leimert Park when he sees artists going to other parts of town, like Echo Park and Silverlake,” said Caldwell. “There was never a question for him what place is more valuable, more deserving of being built up.” 

There is at least consensus about that. Following a call to action by Caldwell and the nonprofit L.A. Commons, We Love Leimert was co-founded by Wilkinson and Kaya Dantzler in 2019 to preserve and grow LP’s legacy. The group is working on a welcome center, amongst other things. Caldwell said he hopes it will combat the anxiety by acting as a bridge between longtimers and new development, including Bradford’s projects, that is inevitable. One point in the group’s plan is the Sankofa strategy, which “engages the practices of community organizing and artistic activism to create sustainable cultural economic opportunities for the next generation to design and produce cultural programming and experiences in Leimert Park Village.” Those aspirations are being realized, to a degree: In 2022, a building across the street from Sika was purchased by a land trust representing four tenants who agreed to share ownership — an unusual model that’s part of a broader Black empowerment movement that increasingly sees commercial real estate ownership as key to that empowerment.   

As she scrambles to pack up, Wilkinson is planning to move into one of the spaces across the street by Feb. 1, a deadline recently worked out with the property management. She likes the space, which has been renovated and offers a 99-year lease — an upgrade that literally takes her from zero to a hundred. Still, the shock of being suddenly uprooted from Sika’s longtime spot, next to the alley that the city christened with his name, lingers. “It’s very hurtful,” she said of the move overall. “It’s been worse than losing my father.”