They celebrated in Highland Park and the San Fernando Valley, on Sunset Boulevard and Chavez Ravine and wherever Dodgers fans are on that big blue marble called Earth.
But in reality, the only place to be on the night the Blue Crew won their eighth World Series was East Los Angeles.
As the team marched in the Fall Classic against the hated New York Yankees, I wanted to see the fans go crazy in the Mexican-American heartland of the Southland. On the Atlantic Boulevard corridor, between Whittier and Olympic boulevards, television news helicopters have been capturing the pachanga – parties – that spontaneously erupt every time the Dodgers, Lakers or the Mexican men’s national soccer team win an important game.
Fans celebrate the Los Angeles Dodgers’ victory against the New York Yankees on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles on October 30, 2024.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
The party was already so exuberant after the Dodgers’ first three wins – street takeovers and cruising, loud bands and louder fireworks — as the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department blocked off the area during Game 4 and announced it would do the same for Game 5.
How would fans react?
I showed up at the end of the first round at the Paradise Sports Bar on Atlantic, a stone’s throw from Olympic. A mural of Vin Scully in a Lakers jersey and Kobe Bryant in a Dodgers jersey decorated the exterior. Inside, handmade cardboard circles with the Dodgers logo surrounded by crystals hang on the wall.
The crowd was already depressed. The score was 3-0, Yankees.
A special guest was with me: my 73-year-old father. He had insisted on going, “just to see” what might happen. When I said that maybe it was best for him to stay home, in case things got out of hand, Grandpa scoffed.
Fans celebrate the Los Angeles Dodgers’ victory against the New York Yankees on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“The Mexicans will go crazy,” he said, “but they won’t be stupid. »
Paradise bartender Johanna Duque, 48, opened me a Negra Modelo and a Coke for my father, who came here when he was a student. drunk – a drunkard – decades ago.
She asked where we were from, then why we came from Anaheim. When I responded that we wanted to be part of the Eastlos crowd after a Dodgers championship, Duque laughed and shook his head.
“Oh, you want to see the chaos“, the Guatemalan immigrant said in Spanish. “It’s going to be horrible.”
It looked hopeless at first, as the Dodgers fell behind 5-0 after three innings. Worse, some pocho continued to choose morose arena rock in English and Spanish – Pink Floyd and the Doors, Enanitos Verdes and Caifanes – from the digital jukebox that drowned out the baseball broadcast.
To distract from the noise, my father – wearing a Dodgers jersey and hat – blew up a bunch of long-gone bars he frequented on the Eastside. El Regis and La India Bonita. Lisa’s. The Flamingo Inn.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“Hey, isn’t Steve Garvey running for something?” » he asked suddenly. “I want to vote for him!” »
More people flocked.
“Hope never dies, baby!” Duque shouted in Spanish over Alanis Morissette’s “You Shoulda Know.” As if on cue, the Dodgers scored five unearned runs in the top of the fifth inning, waking the comatose Paradise crowd.
I put on “Por Una Mujer Casada” by Banda El Recodo to brighten the mood and went outside to see if law enforcement had already blocked the Atlantic.
Not yet.
Back at the bar, Francisco Salas washed down a plate of grilled chicken with a Dos Equis.
“It’s one thing to celebrate but another to vandalize,” the Jalisco native said in Spanish. “If they sail calmly, that’s great. But when they do that (he swirled his finger in a circle), that’s when the police shut everything down.
“What do you think?” Duque asked me. I said it would be cool if the Sheriff’s Department blocked off the Atlantic, but only if they allowed people to take it over, block party style.
She shook her head again.
“Did you come here?” It won’t be pretty. Because the problem is that people don’t respect authority. The vales.” They don’t care at all.
Diana Parra, an East Los Angeles native, was at Paradise with her friend Jorje Acosta, whom she easily convinced to come from Palmdale for Game 5.
“We want to be here to see what I call ‘the parade,'” Parra, 29, said. “Not the official one but the Whittier one!” You need to be with other Dodgers fans. It’s a feeling of home. »
“The last championship, we didn’t really get to celebrate because of COVID,” Acosta, 42, said. He wore a black and yellow Dodgers jersey with Kobe’s 24 on it. “If we win, we deserve it.”
The two shouted in joy along with the rest of us as the Dodgers scored two runs in the top of the eighth.
I got out at the end of the ninth grade. The Atlantic was now completely sealed off from Olympic to just north of Whittier. A group of CHP officers watched a smartphone streaming the game and waited.
The fireworks exploded as Walker Buehler struck out Alex Verdugo to win the series. Inside Paradise, “I Love LA” blasted as everyone hugged and ordered more buckets (buckets of beer).
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
I grabbed my dad and headed up the Atlantic toward Whittier. THE pachanga was on.
People streamed from businesses and homes, hugging and greeting each other from friends and strangers. Honking cars drove down Whittier to the blockade, then turned around. The air became thick with white smoke as people burned their tires while stuck in traffic or fired bottle rockets from the backs of trucks.
Hundreds of people turned into thousands in just a few minutes. We all marched east, overcome by a sense of communal ecstasy that we didn’t know what to do with except do it together.
What blockade?
“People are getting out of control,” Salvador Rodriguez said in Spanish on the corner of Amalia Avenue. He lives just down the street. “But people want to party – that’s the sport of Los Angeles.”
Nearby, Parra and Acosta waved at the cars, while Ernesto Montes and David Perales of Maywood filmed the scene with their smartphones.
“I’m here to witness greatness,” Montes, 26, said before shouting “Dodgers!”
“LA has been going through a tough time,” Perales, 23, added. “Let’s show the world how we run Los Angeles!”
People lined the streets waving Dodgers flags purchased from a vendor, matching the Dodgers gear they all wore: shirts and ponchos. Jackets and sombreros. Pajamas and scarves. Even onesies or handkerchiefs for dogs.
Gustavo Flores and his wife, Sandy, stood outside a Taco Bell at the corner of Whittier and Goodrich boulevards with their two young children. Katalina, 3 years old, was sleeping on her father’s shoulder.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“We want to show them the history,” said Gustavo, 28, with a smile as wide as the grille of a Chevrolet Impala.
“We’ve been watching games our whole lives. We were stressed all night. Now we can be happy! added Sandy, 25.
Freddy Sanguino of Hacienda Heights wore a Freddie Freeman jersey as he walked down the middle of Whittier Boulevard. He held up a miniature World Series trophy and allowed people in cars to take selfies with him.
“I can’t even explain how good it feels,” Sanguino said. “‘Twenty-four will be twice as big as anything else!’ »It’s for all Latinos! It’s for Vinny! It’s for Fernando!
My dad and I ended up outside the Commerce Center, where we met three groups of cousins from his side of the family.
Among them were Susana and Diego, the oldest and youngest children of my Tío Santos. They carried a banner with images of Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Kiké Hernández and Max Muncy that read: “Happy Heavenly Birthday Santos.”
My Tío Santos was a die-hard Dodgers fan who died in early September of a heart attack. At his funeral, my cousins displayed an Ohtani jersey near his casket. Friday, the day of the official Dodgers parade and Fernando Valenzuela’s birthday, my uncle would have been 77 years old.
“‘Excited’ isn’t even enough, Gus,” Susana told me. “There is no word in the dictionary that could describe the joy my father would have felt today. But a Dodgers championship was just what it was meant to be.
Dodgers fans light fireworks to celebrate the Los Angeles Dodgers’ victory over the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
The fireworks were still going off two hours after the final start when my dad and I left. People were still arriving.
The scene was much uglier in other parts of Los Angeles. Crowds robbed or vandalized downtown stores. In Echo Park, idiots spray-painted a subway bus before setting it on fire and burning it to the ground. Incidents like these will result in media coverage that will give even more weight to those who insist that Los Angeles is a hellscape that cannot be saved.
These will not be my memories. What my father and I experienced on Whittier Boulevard was Los Angeles at its best. I have never seen people so happy, so relatively calm, so united. They were bursting with joy and no blockade was going to stop them.
We walked down Amalia to Olympic, where we parked. Atlantic was strangely calm. Tapes blocked almost everything, including a Shell station that has been the focal point of celebrations in the past. My father couldn’t wait to see bands playing there while people danced in front of the gas pumps.
“They took away tradition!” » he said in Spanish with disgust. “Where is the band? These are the things we need so that the race can have fun.
A rocket exploded above us.
“Sometimes he East It’s our fault,” Papi said with a shrug. “Yes, we make a fuss.”
We are going too far.
Another fireworks display rings out. He was smiling now.
“Too bad!”
