Raise a Tequila for The East Side

It's hard to believe, looking at the Great Five Point Eight Head dancing with PD in Elysian Park last Sunday, that the lady has gotten enormous. From the rear she looks just like the old FiveHead, but from the side -- ai, caramba. See her Friday, big. See her Saturday, bigger. Little Maynard-stasia is jumping around in there, waiting to bounce out into the world...said Plotnik, tossing salt over his shoulder and spitting three times.

Elysian Park is an anomaly -- though it is in the middle of the city, and is the metropolis's second-largest park, few Stilettolinos use it. Most have no idea where it is. You get car clubs and gangbangers and kids on swings and infants in strollers and quinceañera girls in flouncy white dresses and vatos drinking beer in ribbed t-shirts down in the main part of the park, but on the other side, where the next picture was taken, it's pretty much deserted, except on game day when Plotzer fans drive through heading to and from the stadium.

When The Great Plotnik looks at this picture of downtown, he realizes none of these buildings were here when he was growing up. Not a one. When he thinks about Stiletto City, he remembers it from the smiling eyes of a child. He loved growing up there. It was hot when the rest of the country was cold. He and his brother rarely had to play inside.

So he's happy to see The Great PD and the Great 5.8 starting a family in a city that is good for kids, and especially on the East Side, the Elysian Park side, the part of town that still feels like it did when Plotnik was small. As much as he is dismayed by the vapid, exit-less maze that is the rest of S. City, EPark and Angelino Heights and Elysian Park still feel like home.

We won't talk about the young guy on the plane flying down last weekend, who kept talking about how he had to get his infant on a fast track into the right preschool so he could funnel into the right private elementary school so he could grab the right private middle school so he could...you know. That's the new Stiletto. Plottie is dreaming about the old Stiletto this morning. It's his blog.