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This is Sarita\u2019s. If you can\u2019t tell from the blurry picture, it\u2019s a Mexican eatery down the street from where I grew up in Spring Valley. There are dozens of hole-in-the-wall places to grab a burrito, carne asada fries, or whatever else suits your fancy in the neighborhood. I happen to be partial to Sarita\u2019s. My friends and I would often go two doors down to La Posta during our high school years. There was also Salazar\u2019s, Santana\u2019s, and several others whose names I can\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n
Sarita\u2019s is the kind of comfort food I crave on a regular basis. It\u2019s a required destination when I visit family in San Diego. However, this is about more than repping any kind of nostalgia. This is about the possibilities a place like Sarita\u2019s can represent.<\/p>\n
Each trip to Sarita\u2019s is a parley of the masses. Every kind of denizen of the Spring Valley suburb will be seen at the eatery. The high school enfants terribles<\/em>, the blue collar<\/a> and white collar<\/a> workers (I plan to talk about these labels sooner or later and similar coding of students at my school), the day laborers, the families, the well-to-do in their oversized houses on Mount Helix, the working class families that don\u2019t actually buy drinks at Sarita\u2019s but save a handful of change by going to the liquor store across the street, the black community, the white community, the Latino community (though, unlike Los Angeles, Latino and Mexican are almost<\/em> synonymous in Spring Valley \u2013 chalk it up to being ten minutes from the border), the Armenian community, and whoever else I\u2019m forgetting in this cross-section of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n This is common ground for all classes and races. It is a miasma of ages and colors\u00a0 clamoring for greasy meats and cheeses in differently fried and served permutations. Sure, not everyone\u2019s walking out with the Shamu-sized Styrofoam container of horchata, but we\u2019re all in this together, man.<\/p>\n During the two year period that I manned a popular LA newsstand Friday and Saturday nights, I was amazed at the fact that all walks of life came to the location. It was class-less unhallowed ground. I thought it was unique in this distinction. Like the newsstand, Sarita\u2019s just might be a building place towards considering, plotting out our Temporary Autonomous Zone<\/a>.<\/p>\n I apologize for mapping my pedagogy of liberation \u2026 I was just waiting for my carne asada tacos. To go.<\/p>\nTell people this is awesome:<\/h3>