Most mornings, I stand near the corner of 3rd Street and Vermont with a crowd of strangers in front of a planter between a McDonald’s and a discount store. There, in the northern extremities of Koreatown, we wait for the Metro Rapid 754 (some riders are waiting for the DASH Wilshire Center/Koreatown instead). I’m often struck by the contrast of a row of bright storefronts with what lately has tended to be a gray sky. Today I noticed another contrast, albeit one that makes more sense than I think I’d like to believe it does. Above two signs from a check cashing business and a barber shop promising “no waiting” and “8 barbers on duty,” stands an ad for the Morongo Resort and Casino out in the desert on the way to Palm Springs.
But I love this stop. In the evenings there’s often a man hawking nuts and produce on the sidewalk and sometimes a woman selling fresh made pastries. Across the street the tchotchke vendors set up shop. When I’m lucky there’s a bacon-wrapped hotdog vendor (if I’m really craving I know one can be found with near certainty at Wilshire and Vermont). Just west on 3rd there’s a taco truck, although one I’ve admittedly never tried because I’m fairly loyal to “El Flamin’ Taco” down at 5th and Vermont. And just a bit further sits California Donuts, a 24-hour palace of carbohydrated delectability well worth the guilt, not to mention untold numbers of other eateries representing cultures around the globe. Some early evenings there’s even some sort of vendor down an alley between the barber shop and the check-casher, but the unidentified liquid I always see running down the alley discourages me from satisfying my curiosity about what he sells.
Mornings don’t bring quite the lively bustle as early evenings, when bus riders transferring between the 754, the DASH, the 204, the 16 or the 316 stop in the neighborhood to finish their daily errands on their way home. Instead, mornings bring a certain mix of dread and enthusiasm. Lots of people dressed up to go to work, a few students studying between quick glances up the street anticipating the red and gray form of the approaching bus. Mothers watch their children as they play around a pay-telephone. Sometimes a sad-looking man sells gum and other inexpensive treats from a metal rack he’s set up next to the phone. Cars turn suddenly into the McDonald’s parking lot, impatiently pursuing their Egg McMuffins and scalding coffee.
I got up early today so I missed most of that, but I can’t help wondering, come Friday, how many people will cash their checks and head to the one armed bandits, how many will get a new coif, how many mangos, peanuts and bananas will be sold from the corner, and just how much paradise $5 will buy.
