NEW YORK — The Immaculate Heart High School alumnae clustered together are screaming. Two guys who went to Palisades High School are going nuts. Also on hand are Jade, who I knew in high school in Los Angeles, and this guy Jack, who I met in L.A. more recently.
We all are at a tavern on St. Marks Place in Manhattan. Dodgers fans line the curb outside, infuriating passing Yankees fans, who really can’t say anything because the Yankees are at this moment down 2-0 in the World Series to the Dodgers and currently losing 4-0 in Game 3, which (spoiler alert!) they will go on to lose.
(Yankee fortunes picked up Tuesday, when they defeated the Dodgers to stay alive for at least one more game.)
I’m practicing the art of masochism. How, you’re wondering? Let me explain. I’m a massive Yankees fan, having been one since I was a child in New York before my parents packed us up and moved to Los Angeles — where I remained a Yankees fan. This really has not been a problem at all until, let’s see, Friday, when it sort of started being less pleasant. Every day it gets worse.
Here’s how my week has gone. I went to Game 1 of the World Series in Los Angeles. Truly a blessing. I keep reminding myself that it was good to have seen an all-time-classic baseball game even if it ended with Freddie Freeman destroying my night and possibly the Yankees’ hopes of a 28th championship. I went to Game 2 of the World Series (I am truly fortunate, prayer hands emoji) where I watched the Yankees just absolutely suck — there’s really no other way to put it.
For Game 3, my editor, a supposedly kind man, wanted me to go to New York to write about the World Series from there. He wasn’t going to send me to the game, but wanted me to suss out the vibes in the city. (Very bleak. Nice weather, though; fall is beautiful, the leaves fall down here, like, right off the trees. Googling “Is leaves falling from trees normal or are they sick?”)
Finally, I would be in the city where fans like me exist. Yankees hats everywhere. But, no, my editor thought, and I — the masochist — agreed, it would be interesting to find a Dodgers bar in this city of sin where bars remain open until 4 a.m. and they all serve liquor instead of natural wine. So I walked past bar after bar filled with Yankees fans and made my way to Taqueria St. Marks Place on the quaint, quiet, off-the-beaten path street of St. Marks Place in the East Village. Note: sarcasm. St. Marks is a den of hedonism. I got my ear pierced there drunkenly once upon a time. Different story. Moving on.
Freddie Freeman hit a walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning to lift the Dodgers to a 6-3 comeback victory over the Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series.
So a Yankees fan, me, walks into a Dodgers bar, Taqueria St. Marks Place, and has to explain to everyone that he is a reporter with the Los Angeles Times (cheers) but also that he is a Yankees fan (hissing).
The bar is full as a well-poured glass of beer, spilling over. It’s two floors and every inch is occupied, with maybe a hundred people decked out in Dodgers paraphernalia. They are dressed like extras in a romantic comedy set at a generic Mexican Dodgers bar. California and Mexican Chihuahua license plates line the walls, along with photos of Los Angeles athletes who have won championships. Pau Gasol is heavily featured. Patrons are wearing more Dodgers clothing than fans at Dodger Stadium wear. Wardrobe went overboard on this one.
Thankfully, I’m prepped for this assignment. This is a sociological phenomenon I have studied. I wrote two years ago about a Knicks bar in Silver Lake, 33 Taps, full of New York expats overdressed in Zabars hats and Katz’s Deli shirts desperately trying to jaywalk across Sunset Boulevard so they can say they don’t understand why Angelenos don’t jaywalk.
“Something about sports fans gathered together in the wrong city exaggerates the contours of the identity they share,” I wrote, brilliantly.
On the other coast, the Angelenos reminded me deeply of the Knicks fans. Except, unlike Knicks fans, these people actually have something to celebrate very soon.
“You have something to prove at the Dodgers bar in New York,” said Phil Barraza, a former North Hollywood resident who opened Taqueria St. Marks Place in Manhattan in 2015 with his wife, Andrea Barraza. “It’s like when you go to a game in a different stadium. You deck yourself out because you want to show off who you are and what you’re about. In L.A. you can go to a bar dressed in regular clothes. Out here, you have to represent.”
The Barrazas opened the bar — which many patrons told me serves the only good Mexican food in New York — to fill the gap they saw in authentic, L.A.-style Mexican cuisine in New York.
Now, with the Dodgers on the brink of winning it all, Barraza is planning the celebration. He is setting up plastic sheeting outside the bar so that they can pop champagne and spray it everywhere the moment the Dodgers win.
Rappers Ice Cube and Fat Joe will take the stage in front of their hometown crowds — in L.A. and New York, respectively — at Games 2 and 3 of the World Series.
Writing about the Knicks bar also taught me that, beyond the owners, these places have to have some sort of ringleader. In my sample size of two, this person is a fairly quiet man who doesn’t seem to stand out, but other patrons say is the glue.
At Taqueria St. Marks Place, it’s Corey Kesluk, 36, who is sitting on a stool at the far left of the bar. If you weren’t aware that Kesluk comes to the bar often, the metal plaque in the bar in front of his seat that’s inscribed with his name lets you know. That’s his seat. Kesluk leads a rousing rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch every game he’s at the bar.
“You can feel at home here,” says Kesluk, who explained that he earned his plaque by coming to the bar two or three times per week since it opened in 2015.
Once you peel back the L.A. bravado, though, you see the fans here aren’t as loyal to the city out west as they appear. After all, they’re living in New York. One of Kesluk’s favorite things about Taqueria St. Marks Place is that he can walk to it easily. Where he’s from, in Sherman Oaks, he said, he had to drive everywhere, making going to bars a more difficult experience.
“Needed a change of scenery,” Kesluk says when asked why he moved to New York.
Not every fan is an L.A. transplant, though. Deep in the bar, sitting on the terraced area overlooking the lower floor and watching the game on a massive screen, is Andrew Kramer, 54, who hails from Long Island’s Lynbrook. He’s with one of his kids.
The Dodgers and New York Yankees will play Major League Baseball’s starriest World Series in decades.
Kramer is of a type I was told didn’t exist. His father, who grew up in Brooklyn, was a massive Dodgers fan. When the Dodgers abandoned New York for sunnier pastures, his father stayed loyal, unlike others who shifted allegiances.
“Not everyone switched,” Kramer says. “That was his team. He loved them more than anything. He used to say he ran a fever for a week when they moved.”
Kramer’s father died last fall, so he didn’t get to see the series that was once so common in New York.
“We know he’s watching from above,” Kramer says. “Me and his three grandsons all rooting for the Dodgers.”
A 10-year-old Dodgers fan believed he was getting out of class early to get braces removed. Instead, he attended the World Series and caught Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam.
When the Dodgers score again and more people laugh at me, I decide to get some air and space from the screaming fans. At the corner, Dan Brennan and Jim Lahey, a couple of youthful Yankees fans, are eating slices from Stromboli Pizza, taking a break from a nearby sports bar that isn’t filled with Dodgers fans. They don’t feel too good about Taqueria St. Marks Place.
“I don’t think it should be allowed,” Brennan says. “They should shut it down. When George Steinbrenner was alive, this wouldn’t be allowed.”
This comment confuses me. How did I not know that George “The Boss” Steinbrenner, the late Yankees owner, moonlighted for the New York State Liquor Authority?
At the Stromboli Pizza counter, Frank Curanaj sells a barbecue chicken slice to a customer and laments the rowdy, obnoxious nearby Angelenos (his sentiment).
“It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. I don’t really like baseball to be honest, but say I’m a Yankees fan. I don’t really like California in general,” he says. “These Dodgers fans are really irritating. After the game is over, they come order pizza. They place their order and then say, ‘I didn’t order that.’ One girl accused me of upselling her because she’s a Dodger fan.”
He shakes his head. No love lost here.
“They don’t know how to order pizza because they don’t know what good pizza is,” he says. He looks up. “That’s a good quote, right?”
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