The Unexpected L.A.: A Night About the Town

My friend and I started out on a recent Saturday night to find the pavilion in East L.A., on 1st and Boyle, where mariachis wait to be hired for weekend parties. David, an activist cabdriver, said he’d been there many times, and I made a dinner reservation for 9 at La Serenata de Garibaldi on 1st. We were leaving at 4:30 from Pacific Palisades; we’d have plenty of time to check out the scene, interview some folks, pick up some business cards. Hoping, as ever, to find some wonderful norteno groups as well as jarocho musicians from Veracruz.

But first David had to pick up two blind ladies from New York who come out to Los Angeles a couple of times a year to catch some shows. We stopped by the Knightsbridge Theatre in the basement of the Bailey Building, south of Old Pasadena. The place also had a shop with one of the finest collections of Fiesta Ware I’ve seen in a long time, so we whiled away the minutes as “The Last of the Red Hot Mammas” finished up.

Then the seeing-eye dog had to relieve himself and took his own sweet time about it. David said, by way of small talk, “Of course these ladies can’t see, so I’ve taken them to the Palm for steaks and also to Taylor’s over on 8th, and since they’re impervious to atmosphere, they said the steaks at Taylors were far better.”

We said goodbye to the ladies and decided to drop by Taylor’s for a drink. It was packed with the kind of men and women who used to frequent the Dresden Room 50 years ago, people whom the white wine craze had completely passed by: Martinis were the order of the day, if we could have gotten to the bar, which we couldn’t. Outside, in the neon jungle (not a cliche) of Koreatown--without a translation in sight--we spotted an inviting awning with the name Guelaguetza. Over on the Westside, on Palms, there’s a Guelaguetza with seemingly the finest mole in the Western hemisphere. Except this Guelaguetza had no relation to the one on Palms, just fluorescent lights, a few exhausted customers and no alcohol on the menu. I called La Serenata and canceled our reservations.

Now what? We stood on the sidewalk in front of another store, which all of a sudden began to look like that Charlton Heston movie “Touch of Evil,” with the words: “Regalos, Agua, Discoteca” and a giant Mexican water bottle, a garrafon , plunging through the awning like that sports car at the Hard Rock Cafe.

“OK,” David said, “I’m taking you to my territory,” which seemed to be a strip mall in the middle of nowhere with 40 cars where there should have been 20, and it took us 30 minutes to get out of there. So we went over to Vermont, where my mother won my stepfather’s heart 52 years ago at the Dresden Room by sending him an anonymous valentine with a gorilla on it, but all of Vermont was packed, so we slunk over to Hillhurst, to the place that used to be Katsu, and David made a dreadful joke, “We’re down to the bone” (because now the place is named Shin). Suddenly, everybody seemed to have gone home.

Somewhere over on 1st and Boyle, norteno guys were languidly caressing their accordions, mariachis brandishing their trumpets and handsome jarochos all in white fingering their celestially beautiful harps. But, of course, that was only what we’d expected, going out on the town to find unexpected L.A.