Hot Dog:LA (January 22nd, 2007)

Hot Dog (LA)
Why does the gay community hate the wiener? A strange question, I know; but hopefully it will make sense by the end of the blog.

A couple months a go, my friend from Maryland told me that he and his family would be coming out to visit in December; so we started to make some plans. I suggested some great southern California cities to hang out in: Pasadena, San Diego, Orange, Palm Springs, and Santa Barbara. We even talked about going to Mexico.

However his reply was, "I really want to go to LA". What in the world! If you know me, you know that I do not have a Randy Newman "I Love LA" attitude. In fact, it's more of a Bad Religion "Los Angeles is Burning" Philosophy. Now Jonathan is not a tourist, he was a corn-fed Chino boy just like me, so of all people he should no how evil LA is. I did my best to dissuade him from such folly, but he was unmoving on his city of choice.

My thoughts wavered as to whether I really wanted to join this tour of the Big city in my own backyard; but, I figured it wasn't my vacation that was being ruined so I might as well tag along.
Around this time I was becoming more and more attracted to Roadside Americana, and became very excited about the idea of seeing and eating at the Tail O' the Pup. This is a Hot Dog stand built in 1945 that was built to look like a Hot Dog in a bun. It was one of the last remaining programmatic buildings surviving in LA from that time period. It's a historical icon of the city!

People like Orson Welles would pull up in his limo and have his driver get him a couple of the world famous Dogs. Others Famous stars like Magic Johnson, Jay Leno, Whoopi Goldberg, and Pamela Anderson have all partaken of the Beefy frankfurter. How could you not want to venture out and see a place that has architectural, historical, and Star-status significance? So, I told Jonathan that we NEEDED to visit this place. If I was going to go out on this journey then I had to at least have something worth while to carry me through; and the Tail O' the Pup was such a place. Jonathan assured me that this would be one of our stops and that we would not pass it up.

So a week before we head out to the forsaken city, I decided to get directions to the famous stand. When I googled it, all sorts of sights sprung up that stated the Tail O' the Pup had closed it doors and been moved into storage last year! My stomach sank, I began to fill nauseous; How could this be! How could the city let this happen?

Apparently the owner of the land that the Hot Dog Stand was located on would not renew the lease. The new plan is to build Condos for Gays and Lesbians. Thus the historical relevant stand has been reduced to storage.

I still went on the tour; I ventured into the heart of the city without getting to see the beauty that once captured Los Angelino's imagination. But the question that kept coming to mind was the same one I asked at the beginning "Why doesn't the gay community enjoy the wiener"? Was there simply no way the two could coexist side by side.