The Gold Room: Where Mexico and America make Menudo

This is the place where rectangular night skies shimmer over pump, red vinyl booths. The place where a sedan-sized coke mirror embossed with giant palms and the bar's logo in frosted glass adorn the backdrop of doting, buxom bartenders who display their ambivalence to the top 4 buttons on their blouses. Where Mariachi and Classic Rock play musical chairs on the jukebox, and the newly arrived hipsters rub elbows with tried and true, old school Mexican Rancheros. Where peanuts abound in wicker baskets on the bar and where free, authentic Mexican tacos keep appearing so long as you keep ordering your 4 dollar Tequila shot/Tecate combo. This is the Gold Room.
If not just for the kitsch, fantastic service, awesome jukebox and free tacos the Gold Room tells a story of a neighborhood(Echo Park) whose history is emblematically LA. As far back as the early 20th when it branded "Red Hill" because of the number of socialists and left-wing thinkers in the area, Echo park has always been a haven for those living and thinking on the fringes of mainstay. After World War 2, large numbers of Latinos began settling in the area and the inevitable white flight occurred: dropping rents and making Echo Park even more desirable to artists struggling to make ends meet. From Ayn Rand to Charles Bukowski, Jackson Browne to Elliot Smith, Echo Park's list of past(and even present) residents is a real who's who of the creative community despite having remained a predominantly poor Latino community. True, the 1993 gang film La Vida Loca was filmed in Echo Park partly because the line between the material in the script and the reality on the streets was virtually non-existant. However, much has changed since the early 90s: violent crime has plummeted, rents for apartments are among the highest in the city and rolled-up pant legs, fixies and ironic mustaches now abound
Nonetheless, Echo Park remains an amazing social experiment in relations between whites and Latinos; and(in my mind at least) there remains no better place than the Gold Room to witness how uniquely this confluence of cultures takes shape in this city. Any night is good at the Gold Room, but the ratio tends to tip toward hipsters on Friday and Saturday nights. I think the mix is best on Monday-Thursday nights. Daytime, however, tends to tip heavily toward the Latino element(you'll probably be the only person speaking English), but Dodger games at home usually make for a more mixed crowd.
And if the free tacos and peanuts aren't enough, do realize that on Friday and Saturday nights succulent Street Meat(bacon wrapped hot dogs with grilled onions and peppers) is just outside the door.