An Ode to El Gran Burrito

By John Kamp

   

    Were it not for its location at the noisy intersection of Santa Monica and Vermont, and just adjacent to the chic sculptural Metro station entrance, El Gran Burrito could be in Tijuana, or, for that matter, in the middle of nowhere.  It resembles a ramshackle roadside stand you’d find somewhere past Fresno and well off the freeway, the kind of place you’d see on an empty stomach after two hours of driving and not a rest-stop vending machine in sight.   This purely utilitarian roadside architecture is, however, not out of place within the modern Los Angeles urban landscape, which comprises, among other things, quite a few schlocky works of construction that house cheap and greasy Mexican and Central-American delights:  one-story, shack-like structures with painted signs covering virtually every available space on its many faces.  “24-Hour Comida Mexicana.” “Tacos al Carbon.”  “Menudo.”    

For those who are unfamiliar with El Gran Burrito, it figures as a welcomed and beloved late-night Los Angeles institution in the minds of a delicious cross-section of the city’s populace.   It’s 2:30 a.m., and under cheap fluorescent lighting and the peripheral light pollution of this haphazard metropolis, sit groups of gay rancheros returning from Tempo, a gay ranchero nightclub; Central American transsexuals and their friends and tricks; middle-aged Mexican couples ostensibly ducking out for some respite from an overcrowded household of children and grandparents; East LA kids returning from West Hollywood, and in particular, from Circus, perhaps the largest gay Latino venue on Saturday nights; and of course, a smattering of local white hipsters, some of whom sport oversized sunglasses, behind which they see the whole affair as “ironic,” while others are much too drunk to care.  In any case, everyone is glad to be there, and so am I. 

On this particular early morning, it is May 6, post-Cinqo de Mayo, and sometime after 2:00 a.m.  On this particular early morning, the wind is blowing hard and dry, a Santa Ana wind three months past season, arriving on the heels of an already excessively dry winter and spring.  The winds bend palm trees west towards the ocean, and blow stacks of paper napkins off of makeshift tables.  This is, however, not the time to contemplate what a Santa Ana wind in May portends for LA cosmically and ecologically, as we have just arrived at El Gran Burrito from West Hollywood, and I have just ordered a quesadilla.  I am half-tipsy and starving, as is the case of virtually every patron of the restaurant.   

The actual building housing El Gran Burrito perhaps makes up just one-sixth of the total lot area.  The rest is devoted to asphalt, which is further divided up into parking and then an array of outdoor seating options.  The whole spectacular mess is surrounded by chain-link and wrought-iron fencing, with an occasional potted ficus or palm thrown in for good measure.  In some locations next to the building you can eat standing up on long narrow tables attached to the exterior walls.  A lone man in a cowboy hat and tight white jeans does so.  Next to him are several tables located under and a long pitched eave.  The bulk of the patrons, however, huddle and congregate on plastic picnic tables clustered towards the street corner at Santa Monica Boulevard, next to the display cases where you pick up your order, and underneath impossibly bright fluorescent lights.  A line begins near the entrance from the parking lot and weaves its way up to the counter where you place your order and receive a number.  By the time you have walked but 10 paces up to the display cases and food, your order is nearly finished.  I hand the cook my number, and chop chop across a golden tortilla, some lettuce and a tomato, and I have a quesadilla.  Proceed to the condiments cart, where vats of toasty red salsa, guacamole, pico de gallo, and plastic silverware await to be added to your platter. 

I sit down with my three friends and devour my food.  Everyone else around us does the same, as after a night of drinking and standing around and blabbing and dancing and walking around and making out and whatever else you happened to be doing, greasy Mexican food never tasted so good.   In between bites I exchange mindless quips with my friends and cock my head around to observe the goings-on around me.  Here on this excessively dry and breezy early morning sit a smattering of people, talking, laughing, eating, unwinding - contented to be there and in the presence of others.  El Gran Burrito is a convivial, comfort-food pit-stop on the sometimes long way home from somewhere west. 

As patrons get up to leave and ostensibly head east, and as we do the same, one of my friends mentions how El Gran Burrito’s days may be numbered.  Its proximity to a Metro station means, most likely, a new transit-oriented development on top of it.  (The adjacent Metro station serves as the midpoint of the North Hollywood-Union Station route of the Metro Red Line, the only fully subterranean rail line in Los Angeles).  It is the station I walk to and from almost every day of the week, to take the Red Line to work, to Hollywood, and beyond. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has begun developing the land on and around Red Line stations with high-density housing and retail spaces along the buildings’ ground levels.   The idea is that these developments will help to boost ridership and serve as economic and development generators in somewhat depressed sections of the city. 

To be sure, the landscape around the Santa Monica-Vermont station is in need of a revision. It is tattered, fragmented, and ugly - a strange hybrid of urban and suburban development that is so quintessential to LA:  overstuffed strip malls, half-empty oversized parking lots, gas stations, towering power lines, booming swap meets, and underperforming chain retail stores such as Staples and Payless Shoes.   In terms of pedestrian friendliness, it would most likely receive a D, if there were such a grading system. 

For all of these reasons, it would superficially make sense then that El Gran Burrito would go, to make way for a development that could help to stitch back together a badly fragmented urban landscape.  However, for reasons that can only come from a half-drunken visit to El Gran Burrito at 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and then a visit to one of the new transit-oriented developments at the same time, you would most likely say otherwise.  Visit one of these new developments and the retail will most likely be closed by this time.  And the kind of retail these developments contain is always the same:  Quizno’s, Jamba Juice, Baja Fresh, Starbuck’s, maybe a Border’s.  The large lenders of these projects continually require that the retail spaces be filled with chain stores, whose business pro-formas are predictable and certain.  Even if a new development at Santa Monica and Vermont could contain a retail space to house a new El Gran Burrito, the lender of the project most likely would not allow it.  Baja Fresh would take its place. 

For all intents and purposes, El Gran Burrito should be the kind of space I dislike and thus wouldn’t mind being replaced by a Baja Fresh.   It is ugly, asphalt-ridden, and lined with that ubiquitous wrought-iron fencing that manages to make the LA landscape so unpleasantly harsh at times.  Its design details – or lack thereof - go against everything I have learned about what makes a great urban space – be it public or private.  In my books, courses, lectures, and profession, we are taught to think Paris, New York, Rome.  However, I would like to think El Gran Burrito, and I would like nothing more than for it to stay.  I can’t think of anywhere else one can go on an early Sunday morning that is so animated and alive and that brings together such an unlikely cross-section of people to share in something as simple as no-frills Mexican food.  El Gran Burrito is that place where you can go to savor the waning pleasures of yet another Saturday night gone by and forget about the fact that the Santa Anas are blowing three months past season and just how wrong that might be.