Fast Track Prototype

Playboy Bunnies Are Soft and Cuddly

My face was firmly planted in the couch. I moved my eyes as far as I could to peer at the clock and saw that it was almost 10:15 pm. Sketch said he’d be popping by at that time to go to a fundraiser involving playboy bunnies and karaoke. You’d think I’d be excited about that prospect alone, two quintessential things coming together to form a robotic tour de force of mechanical lion sweetness.

Nope.

I was happy on the couch.

I’ve been suffering from mild fatigue so I’ve been sluggish and the couch had me in its warm embrace.

Sketch showed up and since I committed to the event, I peeled my face off the couch and we drove down to a ghost town of a street. There was hardly any traffic, all the shops were closed – it was very eerie. I expected zombies to come trudging out from behind the corner and me with no weapon; we would have been brain flambe. The only sounds came from the bar we were headed to and once we got inside we were greeted by platinum blonds, tiny skirts and sake shots. Admittedly, we totally did sake a bad deal and tossed them down like bad whiskey, but in all fairness, two did the trick to get me primed to sing a song when the lights came on.

It was time to go home. Vanessa, our French Canadian server was a doll and humored us so we pulled in one more round just for her and then stepped out into the quiet to find out what our next destination was. Our friend at Maloney’s wasn’t working and due to an intense craving for Ariza’s we called up our Silver Lake resident and with a little nudge and her brokering out of a glass of wine she agreed to meet up with us at El Prado to indulge in more beer and then ultimately, Ariza’s.

The night almost took a nose dive when we walked out of El Prado and turned the corner only to find the street normally vacated by the Ariza’s Taco trailer empty. At first I thought I was seeing things. Not seeing the trailer there, well I’ve never not seen the trailer there, was heartbreaking. Sketch has been witness to its great escapes before, but for me, it was like removing the top off a girl and not being greeted by her mammarian friends. We stood there stunned. It wasn’t even go time and they definitely went a go. Luckily for us, our Echo Park guide took us to the next best thing. Taco Zone.

Don’t be fooled by the name. It’s the real deal. Their creamy green sauce, which really wasn’t your standard fair verde, made for an extra kick of flavor that made my medley of lengua on tortilla a delight. I’m not kidding, there was no regret on my end for missing Ariza’s truck. But then again, I was pretty buzzed and day old taco bell would have been divine.

Tags: Echo Park, El Prado, Karaoke, Silver Lake, Taco Zone

WTF Weekend: The Echo Park Gentrification Edition

Imagine my surprise when I got an invitation to Echo Park Hospitality Night.

What?

My ideas of Echo Park come from years of conditioning, experience and old social affairs. Echo Park at the time I was growing up, wasn’t exactly – hospitable. It was a gang town, kinda like, Atwater. But nowadays it seems that these towns have been gentrified big time, so imagine my hesitation when someone said, we’re gonna party in Echo Park. Not that I have a problem with that, my history suggests that I can hang, but it wasn’t exactly at the top of my list. Maybe right next to drive by shootings, slapping some bitches and fuckin some ho’s, which is always a favorite past time of mine.

I thought it was a street festival of sorts, but I got it wrong. It was really a vintage boutique shop coming up with a creative way to promote their store – it succeeded, by confusing people. To their credit, it worked. My friend scored a gorgeous dress, which by the way looks stunning on her and we got free booze. Not to mention that we got cheap drinks at Shortstop, who my friend described as a half cholo and half hipster joint. She was spot on. Seriously, spot on. We went to some other place I can’t remember, although I do recall putting so much charm on someone her man came by and swept her away, boo shenanigans! We capped the evening when our stomachs cried bloody murder and beer fuzz so we hit up Arriza where I scored a very gritty tripas burrito. Yep, even too gritty for me and I’ll eat almost anything. Still good though, just a lot of grit, but that awesome hot sauce, sawesome if you will, they have, holy shit my mouth waters just thinking about it, will pretty much make everything magical. Emosweater can attest to this.

The plan was on Friday, that I was going to stay in and get in some R&R and maybe catch up on some TV. I know it’s a Friday, but I was ok with it. But another friend was in the west side so I joined her to alleviate her inbetween time before she bounced over to downtown for a bar hop of sorts. Well that didn’t happen. We ate at Alibi then skipped on over to Big Foot West and stayed there until we realized we were both pretty drained and called it a night around midnight.

Saturday we crammed a tiny noraebang at Max Karaoke, wow that was an ethnic butchering of a sentence*, for our friend’s birthday surprise. Got drunk in the room, hightailed to downtown to his place to continue what was a very surreal experience; cracked out fashion models all sitting on a bed while others are shooting guns off at sleeping people surreal. Don’t read too much into that last sentence, it’s supposed to sound like that; welcome to Saturday night.

*Noraebang is the Korean word for karaoke, often room style, as opposed to the entire venue. Max Karaoke is Japanese run in Little Tokyo.

Tags: Arriza, Echo Park, Karaoke, Little Tokyo