Inevitably, hipsters have invaded the Gold Room in Echo Park. I've just received a report that "there are like 50 million kids out the door" over there right now, a sight I can't bear somber witness to because I am away from L.A. again. So long $5 beer-and-shot specials, with free tacos thrown in? Please, nooo...
It was only a matter of time, with local businesses' recent successes pressing in from all sides. Wednesday is the busiest night on our local stretch of Sunset Boulevard. The Short Stop hosts Anne Lee's Awesometown. The Echo is still doing Dub Club. And next-door to Gold Room is old-school Mexican American joint Barragan's, now permanently overrun by scenesters who only recently discovered the $2 margarita Wednesday special. Naturally, the spill-over crowd after Barragan's closes is an easy target for fresh business. For a couple weeks now, the Gold Room on Wednesdays has been hosting DJs. Where the MySpace communcation cells go, the cool kids follow. The death wish.
Why fault Gold Room for wanting to make an extra buck? Why get all haughty and neighborhood essentialist when, as someone with a blog, I'm as much a part of the problem as the kids that flipped La Cita? Because Gold Room is special. In a gentrifying city, it's stayed real -- real paisas, real skimpily dressed bargirls, and, on most nights, real danger. My four years of regular patronage have got nothing on the real cabrones who guard their watering hole with steely stares and the occasional "rough play," whether threatened or carried out.
I'm not alone in lamenting Gold Room's gradual shift. Read the current top review of the cantina on Yelp: "Dont come here. I love this place. And if more hipsters show up i will vomit." Listen to this guy. All the cool kids are doing it. And even if you don't, it's already over and done, because the place is now going to host a pointless nightly debate of "who's down enough to be here and who isn't."
Damn it all to hell.
* Photo above from Hadley's Sept. '06 post on Gold Room at LA TACO, which describes another interesting system to keep the invasion in check.
