There's no party like an East LA Dodgers party

They celebrated in Highland Park and the San Fernando Valley, across Sunset Boulevard and Chavez Ravine and wherever Dodgers fans live on this big blue ball called Earth.

But East Los Angeles was actually the only place where the Blue Crew won its eighth World Series.

As the team marched through the Fall Classic against the hated New York Yankees, I wanted to see the fans in the Mexican-American heart of the Southland go crazy. Along the Atlantic Boulevard corridor between Whittier and Olympic boulevards, television news helicopters have captured the city for decades Pachangas – parties – that spontaneously erupt every time the Dodgers, Lakers or Mexico men's national soccer team win a big game.

The parties were so wild after the Dodgers' first three wins – road takeovers and loud cruising Bandas and louder fireworks — that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department closed the area during Game 4 and said it would do the same for Game 5.

How would the fans react?

I showed up at the end of the first inning at the Paradise Sports Bar on Atlantic, a stone's throw from Olympic. A mural of Vin Scully in a Lakers jersey and Kobe Bryant in a Dodgers jersey decorated the outside. Inside, handmade cardboard circles with the Dodgers logo surrounded by crystals hung from the wall.

The audience was already dejected. The score was 3-0, Yankees.

A special guest was with me: my 73-year-old father. He had insisted “just to see” what might happen. When I said that maybe it would be better if he stayed home in case things got out of hand, Daddy scoffed.

Fans celebrate the Los Angeles Dodgers' victory over the New York Yankees on Whittier Boulevard in East LA

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

“Mexicans will go crazy,” he said, “but they won’t be stupid.”

Paradise bartender Johanna Duque, 48, opened a Negra Modelo for me and a Coke for my father, who came here as a child Borracho – a drunk – decades ago.

She asked where we were from and why we came all the way from Anaheim. When I replied that we wanted to be part of the Eastlos crowd after a Dodgers championship, Duque laughed and shook his head.

“Oh, you want to see this desmadresaid the Guatemalan immigrant in Spanish. “That will be okay terrible.”

It initially seemed hopeless as the Dodgers fell behind 0-5 after three innings. Worse, some Pochos continued to select dour arena rock in English and Spanish — Pink Floyd and the Doors, Enanitos Verdes and Caifanes — from the digital jukebox that drowned out the baseball broadcast.

To distract from the noise, my father — wearing a Dodgers jersey and cap — rattled off a few long-vanished bars he used to frequent on the Eastside. El Regis and La India Bonita. Lisa's place. The Flamingo Inn.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

“Hey, isn't Steve Garvey running for something?” he asked suddenly. “I want to vote for him!”

More people streamed in.

“Hope never dies, baby!” Duque screamed in Spanish over “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. As if on cue, the Dodgers scored five unearned runs in the top of the fifth inning, waking up the comatose Paradise crowd.

To lighten the mood, I put on “Por Una Mujer Casada” by Banda El Recodo and went outside to see if the police had already cordoned off the Atlantic.

Not yet.

Back at the bar, Francisco Salas washed down a plate of grilled chicken with a Dos Equis.

“It’s one thing to celebrate, but another thing to destroy,” the Jalisco native said in Spanish. “If they glide along calmly, that’s fine. But if they do that” – he twirled his finger in a circle – “then the police will shut everything down.”

“What do you think?” Duque asked me. I said it would be cool if the Sheriff's Department closed off the Atlantic, but only if they allowed people to take it over, a block party a la block.

She shook her head again.

“Were you here? It won't be pretty. Because the problem is that people don't respect authority. “Les vale.” They couldn't care less.

East LA native Diana Parra was at Paradise with boyfriend Jorje Acosta, whom she easily persuaded to come from Palmdale for Game 5.

“We want to be here to see what I call 'the parade,'” said Parra, 29. “Not the official one, but the Whittier one! You need to be around other Dodger fans. It’s a feeling of home.”

“We couldn’t really celebrate the last championship because of COVID,” said Acosta, 42. He wore a black and yellow Dodgers jersey with Kobe’s 24 on it. “If we win, we deserve it.”

The two of them screamed with joy along with the rest of us as the Dodgers scored two runs in the bottom of the eighth.

At the end of the ninth floor I stepped out. The Atlantic was now completely closed from Olympic to north of Whittier. A group of CHP officers looked at a smartphone broadcasting the game and waited.

The fireworks exploded the moment Walker Buehler defeated Alex Verdugo to win the series. At Paradise, “I Love LA” played as everyone hugged and ordered more Cubetas (bucket of beer).

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

I grabbed my dad and headed up the Atlantic toward Whittier. The pachanga was on.

People streamed out of stores and homes, hugging and mourning friends and strangers. Honking cars drove along Whittier to the blockade and then made a U-turn. The air filled with white smoke as people burned out their tires in traffic jams or fired bottle rockets from the backs of trucks.

Hundreds of people became thousands within a few minutes. We all marched east, filled with a shared feeling of ecstasy that we didn't know what to do except do it together.

Which blockage?

“People are actually getting out of control,” Salvador Rodriguez said in Spanish at the corner of Amalia Avenue. He lives just down the street. “But people want to party – that’s Los Angeles sports.”

Nearby, Parra and Acosta waved to cars while Ernesto Montes and David Perales of Maywood filmed the scene on their smartphones.

“I’m here for greatness,” Montes, 26, said before shouting “Dodgers!”

“LA has had a tough time,” Perales, 23, added. “Let’s show the world how we run LA!”

People lined the streets waving Dodgers flags that they had purchased from a vendor and that matched the Dodgers gear they were all wearing: shirts and ponchos. Jackets and sombreros. Pajamas and scarves. Even onesies or tissues for dogs.

Gustavo Flores and his wife Sandy stood with their two young children in front of a Taco Bell at the corner of Whittier and Goodrich Boulevard. Three-year-old Katalina slept on her father's shoulder.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

“We want to show them history,” said Gustavo, 28, with a smile as wide as the grille of a Chevrolet Impala.

“We've been watching games our whole lives. We stressed all night long. Now we can be happy!” added Sandy, 25.

Freddy Sanguino of Hacienda Heights wore a Freddie Freeman jersey as he walked down the middle of Whittier Boulevard. He held up a miniature World Series trophy and allowed people in cars to take selfies with him.

“I can’t explain how good this feels,” Sanguino said. “'Twenty-four will be twice the size of everything else! This is for all Latinos! This is for Vinny! This is for Fernando!”

My father and I ended up in front of the Commerce Center, where we met three sets of cousins ​​from his family.

Among them were Susana and Diego, my Tío Santos' eldest and youngest children. They carried a banner with pictures of Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Kiké Hernández and Max Muncy that read, “Happy Heavenly Birthday Santos.”

My Tío Santos was a die-hard Dodgers fan who died of a heart attack in early September. At his funeral, my cousins ​​displayed an Ohtani jersey next to his coffin. Friday, the day of the Dodgers' official parade and Fernando Valenzuela's birthday, mi tio would have been 77.

“'Excited' isn't even enough, Gus,” Susana told me. “There is no word in the dictionary that could describe the joy my father felt today. But a Dodgers championship was just what it had to be.”

Dodgers fans light fireworks on Wednesday to celebrate the Los Angeles Dodgers' victory over the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series.

(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)

The fireworks were still going for two hours after the final when my father and I left. People were still arriving.

In other parts of Los Angeles, the scene was far uglier. In the city center, crowds broke into or vandalized businesses. In Echo Park, goons tagged a Metro bus, then set it on fire, burning it to the base. Incidents like this will result in media coverage that will provide even more fodder to those who insist that LA is a hellscape that cannot be saved.

These won't be my memories. What my father and I experienced on Whittier Boulevard was LA at its finest. I have never seen people so happy, so relatively calm and so united. They were bursting with joy and no obstacles could stop them.

We walked down Amalia to Olympic where we parked. Atlantic was eerily quiet. Almost everything was cordoned off with tape, including a Shell gas station that has been a central gathering spot for celebrations in the past. My father had been looking forward to seeing it Bandas played there while people danced in front of the gas pumps.

“You took away the tradition!” he said in Spanish with disgust. “Where is that? banda? These are the things we need for this la raza can have fun.”

A rocket exploded above us.

“Sometimes it is Is “Our fault,” Dad said, shrugging his shoulders. “Sí hacemos escándalo demás.”

We're going overboard.

Another firework sounded. He was smiling now.

“Well yeah!”