The Driving Thread

Songbird,
On yeah that's cabbage and that looks tasty from my POV!! Although too many hot peppers for my taste buds.

 

Landed at Johnny's Shrimp Boat. More to folo.

 

I'm a noodle person, not a rice person. I like rice in certain doses.

 

I wanted to drive to Pico Rivera. I love the name, Pico Rivera.

"On this week's Love Boat, Charo comes aboard to celebrate a honeymoon with her suave new husband, Pico Rivera!"

Took Olympic Boulevard as far as it would go till it T'd off in front of a homeless encampment. The dude on the left was rolling a J.



Moments later I was on San Pedro Street and passed more homeless folks but had to make a U-turn to get in position to take this:



And then the light at Washington Boulevard turned red which prompted this feller to walk into the middle of the crosswalk to start twirling long sticks.

I had 3 bucks in my pocket and gave it to him then turned right Washington and spent 45 minutes bobbing and weaving through the industrial corridor with 18-wheelers galore.

paper mills
rock crushers
refineries
shipping containers
the 5 and the 10 and the 710 and 605
lots of curves and bends and broken roads

And then I was in Pico Rivera.



Couldn't find food but did make a right turn into the Pico Rivera Historical Museum. It was closed.





Made a right back onto Washington but could not find food or if there was a plaza or whatnot I didn't want was they were offering.

Before long I was in the next town, Whittier, where Richard Nixon lived as a youngster. He went to Whittier College too.

Before long I saw a sign for Johnny's Shrimp Boat next to a roof painted in a sexy shade of blue.



Pulled into a lot and stared at the sign then stared at the building then let indecision kick me in the balls again.

And I made a circle and made a right back onto Washington and Jesus Fucking Christ here we go again.

Found myself in Santa Fe Springs then Montebello kept making one illegal U-turn after another thinking I found a place to eat.

The 5th illegal U-turn had me facing the direction from whence I came and I drove up a bit and said Fuck it and pulled back into Johnny's Shrimp Boat.

I mean, it has Original in the name so it must be pretty good.

Once I was inside I knew it was the right place especially after seeing a mountain of massive golden shrimp fresh from the fryer.

Ordered 6 shrimp and 2 fish with fries. The guy working the fryer is David, whose uncle was Johnny.




After ordering I looked at an L.A. Times feature on a new Johnny's Shrimp Boat opening in July 1994. Jonathan Gold wrote it.



I sat down and took some shots of the walls and decor and ambiance.

Then I heard something funny: Johnny from Days of Our Lives -- who has freak eyes -- was on the TV up in the corner behind me.



What's up with Johnny's eyes?

And how is it that Johnny Soap Opera is on the TV at the exact moment I'm about to eat lunch at Johnny's Shrimp Boat in Whittier?

I took a few more photos while waiting for the food. Every order is made fresh per order of the department of health; can't serve food that's been sitting around.

15 minutes later my order was ready. It was a mountain of greasy goodness.



I felt so adventurous that I ate the tartar sauce too.

I hadn't eaten tartar sauce since the 3rd grade. Elementary school fish sticks and tartar sauce in the '70s was a real horrorshow.

This tartar sauce at Johnny's Shrimp Boat was thick and tangy and tasty. Have I been wrong about tartar sauce all these years?

In his story from '94, Jonathan Gold wrote:

For 40-odd years, until its closing, Johnny’s made the fried shrimp that fed the Eastside: crisp golf balls of fried dough, deep golden speckled with sandy brown, that tasted of clean oil and happened to have a shrimp hidden somewhere inside each one. They were kind of weird, these shrimp, and sometimes the batter stayed too liquid at the center, but they satisfied some primordial fried-shrimp need, bought by fours, sixes or eights, swabbed with a dab or two of the Shrimp Boat’s mild chile sauce. These were Chinese-style fried shrimp, I think, though the owners were Korean and the customers mostly Spanish-speaking: The thick batter defied ethnicity.​

Nailed it except I would have made a comparison. Johnny's ethnic-defying batter made me think of my favorite fast food as a kid: Pioneer Chicken.

Johnny's Shrimp Boat is the Pioneer Chicken of fish.

 

For years until I started high school, the only time we were served sugar in school was when the caf served rice. Those were high holy days. Only reason to look forward to rice for me, as I have previously stated.

 

Jonathan Gold was the Rachel Maddow of print media in the 1990s. Took the scenic route through Las Cruces in GETTING TO THE POINT.

 

The 605 is underrated. Gets hardly any love.

It's 405 this and the 91 SUCKS that and 60 and 5 and stay away from the 110!

Just remember: you can't get to Golf 'n' Stuff without taking the 605.

And, apparently, it gets you to MileHigh's grandma's resting ground.

 

I'm done after this pontificating on an area I've visited numerous times and love, but never lived in. I'm living vicariously through the photos Songbird is providing and they are great.

The 605 is just as important to East LA as the 405 is to the West, but doesn't get the lore for numerous reasons. Vicinity to the coast, access to LAX and numerous attractions, affluence of motorists, etc. I won't delve deeper than that. You draw your own conclusions.

 

EL SEGUNDO -- Sitting on a green bench in the visitors dugout at George Brett Field. I have not found any wallets.

 

Kids are SOOOOO spoiled these days; that field looks better than the Masters (Augusta National) in '95. I remember looking at our town's LL fields and thinking how awful my fields were in the 70's. (I was at Pebble recently and looked at a photo from when I was there in '98 and the grass was horrible compared to today.)

Do kids even know what a bad hop is today? You know the kind that whizzes right by your temple at 100 mph?