Every spring and fall the church around the corner from my place in Van Nuys hosts a fundraiser. The St. Elisabeth Festival runs over four nights and they bring in typical traveling carny-operated rides. In my hometown, these kind of street fairs always had a creepy undertone. Like the carnies might snatch you up and steel you away, or malevolent attendees with pedophiliac tendencies would lure you into their van in the parking lot.
Not so with St. Elisabeth. At this fair, the parishioners make and sell amazing food, pupusas, tacos, churros, homemade drinks. They host loteria games. There are amazing ranchera bands where the musicians dress in matching outfits and the lead singers sport outsized belt buckles and boots with brazenly augmented toes that point upward to the sky. Families come together and eat at large tables with cheap plastic tablecloths. And the teenagers ebb and flow with each other on the dusty ground, exploding with the excitement of unsupervised flirting amongst the loud, rickety rides and the screams of the passengers. Lovers, dressed to the nines, go on the Sizzler, where the centrifugal force presses their bodies together, the ladies scream and the men try and look tough. Even the two neighborhood drunks, dance slowly in a passionate embrace in the middle of the dance floor, welcomed by the love in the atmosphere.
It's one of the most magical experiences I've had in my 36 years in Los Angeles and I just can't get enough of it.