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

But it’s really the only place to go The night the Blue Crew won its eighth World Series It was East Los Angeles.

As the team walks through the Fall Classics I wanted to see fans go wild in the Mexican American heartland of the Southland against the hated New York Yankees. In the Atlantic Boulevard corridor between Whittier and Olympic boulevards, TV news helicopters have been flying for decades rags Parties that spontaneously break out when the Dodgers, Lakers or Mexico men’s national soccer team win a big game.

Fans celebrate the Los Angeles Dodgers’ win against the New York Yankees on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles on October 30, 2024.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

The party was already so enthusiastic after the Dodgers’ first three victories that there were street takeovers and loud parades. bandanas and louder fireworks displays – the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department closed the area during Game 4 and announced it would do the same for Game 5.

How would fans react?

I finished last in the first shootout at Paradise Sports Bar in Atlantic, a stone’s throw from the Olympics. A mural of Vin Scully in a Lakers jersey and Kobe Bryant in a Dodgers jersey adorns the exterior. Inside, handmade cardboard hoops with the Dodgers logo surrounded by crystals hung from the wall.

The crowd was already demoralized. The score was 3-0 Yankees.

I had a special guest with me: My 73 year old father. He insisted on going “to see” what might happen. Papi scoffed when I suggested it might be better for him to stay home in case things got out of control.

Fans celebrate the Los Angeles Dodgers’ win over the New York Yankees on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles

(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.

He asked where we were from and then why we were so far from Anaheim. Duque laughed and nodded when I said we wanted to be part of the Eastlos crowd after the Dodgers championship.

“Oh, you want to see desmadrethe Guatemalan immigrant said in Spanish. “Will be wretched.”

The situation looked hopeless at first, as the Dodgers trailed 5-0 after three innings. To make matters worse, some pochos kept selecting dour arena rock songs in English and Spanish—Pink Floyd and the Doors, Enanitos Verdes, and Caifanes—from the digital jukebox that drowned out the baseball broadcast.

To drown out the noise, my father — in his Dodgers jersey and hat — rattled off a bunch of old bars he patronized on the East Side. El Regis and La India Bonita. Lisa’s Place. Flamingo Inn.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

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

More people flocked.

“Hope never dies, baby!” Duque shouted in Spanish over Alanis Morissette’s song “You Should Know.” As if on cue, the Dodgers woke the comatose Paradise crowd by scoring five unearned runs in the top of the fifth inning.

To lighten the mood, I played Banda El Recodo’s “Por Una Mujer Casada” and went outside to see if law enforcement had blocked the Atlantic yet.

Not yet.

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

“Celebrating is one thing, vandalizing is another,” the Jalisco native said in Spanish. “It’s okay if they fly calmly. But when they did that”—he twirled his finger in a circle—“that’s when the police shut everything down.”

“What are you thinking?” Duque asked me. I said it would be great if the Sheriff’s Department closed down the Atlantic, but only if they let people take it over as a block party.

He nodded again.

“Have you been here? It won’t be nice. Because the problem is that people do not respect authority. Les vale.” They couldn’t care less.

East Los Angeles native Diana Parra was in Paradise with her friend Jorje Acosta, who she easily persuaded from Palmdale to attend Game 5.

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

“We couldn’t really celebrate the last championship Due to COVID” said Acosta, 42. He was wearing a black-and-yellow Dodgers jersey with Kobe’s number 24 on it. “If we win, we deserve it.”

They both cheered along with the rest of us as the Dodgers scored two runs in the top of the eighth inning.

I went out in the bottom of the ninth inning. The Atlantic was now completely blocked from Olympic to just north of Whittier. A group of CHP officials looked at the smartphone streaming the match and waited.

Fireworks exploded the moment Walker Buehler defeated Alex Verdugo to win the Series. Inside Paradise, “I Love Los Angeles” blasted as everyone hugged and ordered more cubes (beer buckets).

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

I picked up my father and walked across the Atlantic to Whittier. Pachanga it was clear.

People poured out of businesses and homes, hugging and high-fiving friends and strangers. Cars honking their horns drove from Whittier toward the blockade, then made U-turns. The air was thick with white smoke as people stuck in traffic, burning their tires or firing bottle rockets from the back of trucks.

Hundreds of people turned into thousands within minutes. We all walked eastward, caught up in a shared sense of exhilaration that we didn’t know what to do except do it together.

What blockade?

“People are getting out of control,” Salvador Rodriguez said in Spanish at the corner of Amalia Boulevard. He lives just down the street. “But people want to celebrate; this is Los Angeles’ sport.”

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

Montes, 26, shouted “Dodgers!” “I’m here to witness greatness,” he said before shouting.

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

People lined the streets waving Dodgers flags they had purchased from a vendor, matching the Dodgers attire they all wore: shirts and ponchos. Jackets and sombreros. Pajamas and scarf. Even onesies or handkerchiefs for dogs.

Gustavo Flores and his wife, Sandy, stood outside a Taco Bell at the corner of Whittier and Goodrich avenues with their two young children. 3-year-old Katalina was sleeping 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 his Chevrolet Impala.

“We have been watching matches all our lives. We were stressed all night. We will be happy now!” Sandy added 25.

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

“I can’t even tell you how good that feels,” Sanguino said. “’Twenty-four will be twice as big as anything ever! This is for all Latinos! This is for Vinny! This is for Fernando!”

My father and I stopped in front of the Trade Center, where we met three cousins ​​from his family.

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

My Tío Santos was a die-hard Dodgers fan Died of heart attack at the beginning of September. At his funeral, my cousins ​​displayed his Ohtani jersey next to his casket. Friday is the day of the Dodgers’ parade and Fernando Valenzuela’s birthday. my tio He would have turned 77.

“’Exciting’ isn’t even enough, Gus,” Susana told me. “There are no words in the dictionary that can describe the joy my father will feel today. But the Dodgers championship was as it should be.”

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

(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)

When my father and I left two hours after the finale, the fireworks were still going off. People were still coming.

Scene It was much uglier in other parts of Los Angeles. Crowds robbed or vandalized downtown stores. In Echo Park, idiots tagged a subway bus before setting it on fire and burning it to the ground. Such events will lead to: media coverage This further emboldens those who insist that Los Angeles is a hellscape that cannot be saved.

These won’t be my memories. What my father and I experienced on Whittier Boulevard was Los Angeles at its finest. I have never seen people so happy, so calm, so united. They exploded with joy and no blockade would stop them.

We walked down Amalia towards the Olympic where we parked. The Atlantic was eerily quiet. Almost everything was taped off, including the Shell station, which had been the focal point of celebrations in the past. My father was looking forward to seeing bandanas I was playing there while people were dancing in front of gas pumps.

“They eliminated tradition!” he said in disgusted Spanish. “Where banda? So these are the things we need la raza “They can have fun.”

A rocket exploded above us.

“Sometimes it is like that “It’s our fault,” Papi said with a shrug. “I did a few more things.”

We’re overdoing it.

Another firework went off. He smiled now.

“Oh good!”