i can't think of anything

that beats driving through the city of angels at 3am looking for hole in the wall mexican food with the people i love.

2:30am. mike, akanksha and tony jump into the maxima and leave westwood for el tapatio taqueria in glendale. living here all my life, i've always been a side streets kind of guy, taking the freeway only when necessary. having to haul ass across town to satisfy a late night mexican food craving counts as necessary, so we raced onto the 405. i'd much rather have taken the scenic route--sunset (to shout at the inebriated clubbers) to vermont (where the more classy drunks stumble out of the dresden and the derby) to los feliz (where the coyotes hang out) to glendale blvd--but seeing as el tapa closes at 3 on friday the exception had to be made. after a few wrong turns along the 101 through the valley, we finally make it at quarter past 3. we cross our fingers, hoping that they'll still be open--we knock at the window, lo and behold, someone is indeed there. yet he informs us that the kitchen is closed; mike offers him extra money to still make us something, but the cooks have departed for the evening, he tells us.

"is there anything open 24 hours around here?"
"yeah, yoshinoya and jack in the box are around the corner."
"are there any mexican food places open?" we don't want fucking yoshinojack.
uncertain, he responds in the negatory.

we ask the fellows hanging out in the parking lot, one of them getting their car towed.
"dos burritos, on sunset and alvarado. it's 24 hours."




of course. there has to be 24 hour mexican food in echo park. before we got on the freeway, we made a stop at glendale's le sex shoppe. the first and last time i'd been was during senior in high school. akanksha has never been to one, not even in india. so after much convincing, we take a short field trip inside. business as usual,it seemed, with the 4am crowd droping off their videos and swiftly browsing the new arrivals wall.




onward. we take the 2 all the way to the end, and we see this one place that says 24 HOUR MEXICAN FOOD. it wasn't dos burritos, but it satisfied our criteria for hole in the wall mexican cuisine. of every other night this 24 hour establishment could have been closed (technically it should never close, no?), it chose tonight. it's okay, we told ourselves, dos burritos will not disappoint.





so we make our way up alvarado to sunset, passing the american apparel store and a few lavanderias. believe me, dos burritos did not disappoint. it didn't even exist. at the corner we found king burrito, which was what our boys might have been talking about, but it too was closed. defeat never hurt so bad. we drove home, passing a few 24 hour places--more jack in the boxes, a dennys, the uber-hip brite spot--but we wanted nothing to do with all that. we made our way back to westwood, even passing the benito's in santa monica. i guess we were in such low spirits that not even the old standby could cheer us up. only el tapatio's chorizo burrito and tacos al pastor will do. now it's 7am and i'm hungry and tired and need to be up in a few hours. a waste of a night?



hardly. it was worth every closed taco stand, dildo, and ounce of gasoline. i fucking love this city and the people with whom i experience it.