In a marigold desert, Stockton street vendors keep a Día de los Muertos tradition alive

JUST PAST NOON FRIDAY, at the bustling corner of a quinceañera boutique on Charter Way, the heady scent of cempasúchiles, also known as marigolds, saturated a makeshift stand. 

At the shop’s intersection, a car stops, its passenger readying herself to inquire about the stand’s buckets of vibrant orange flowers — the flora widely known in Mexico as “flor de muerto,” or flower of the dead.