Mama's House

Well I suppose this is one less thing Faye can throw up after a night of drinking.

Among working-class downtown shoppers, belligerent clubgoers and adventurous foodies, devotion to the famed "heart-attack dogs" is strong and strident, a source of raw L.A. nostalgia.

So you can imagine the frustration of vendors like Palacios, caught between the demands of the market and the demands of the law.

She would love to sell bacon-wrapped hot dogs — trust her — but a trip last year to the women's county jail, a trip she says officials orchestrated to "make an example" of her, finally pushed her to give up the bacon and illegal grilling device she used for so long. Instead, she prepares dogs the only way the county Environmental Health Department currently allows, by boiling or steaming. Not grilling. And grilling is the only way to make a classic L.A. bacon-wrapped hot dog.

"Honestly, I can tell you, I've been a working person all my life, I've worked since I was 9 years old," Palacios says. "I don't like being bothered, I don't like being arrested. Never in my life had I been to jail, and they threw me in jail for violating the laws of the health department."

She's not the only one. Ask any Fashion District hot-dog vendor and he or she is sure to have at least one story of being cited, arrested or even jailed for grilling bacon-wrapped hot dogs on the sidewalk.

So why are these tasty treats now effectively banned from being made?

Now a commander, he remains adamant in urging eaters to understand that when prepared on the street, bacon-wrapped hot dogs are illegal on several levels, and potentially hazardous to your health.

"I've seen cockroaches just pour out of the bottom," he says. "I've seen meat sitting out in the sun for hours. We've seen hot-dog carts where the owner has a little bottle where he urinates, because he doesn't want to leave his cart. And he stores the bottle alongside his food."

I suppose the possibility of a hot dog basted in urine is a good reason to regulate hot dog vendors but doesn't it make more sense to narrowly regulate the cleanliness of the vendors rather than to ban entirely the practice of grilling hot dogs? It seems to be a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Of course, one can still get their fix after a night of drinking.

Below the legal vendors are the more ubiquitous operators of homemade carts, which usually consist of propane tanks strapped to modified baby strollers, Target shopping carts or, in most cases, tool carts. They operate completely outside of codes and regulations, their particular rules and organizational methods a mystery to outsiders.

Licensed vendors like Palacios refer to the makeshift bacon-wrapped-hot-dog vendors as "ambulantes" or "piratas," colloquial terms for unlicensed street vendors in Mexico. The ambulantes of L.A. present a host of problems not only for licensed vendors, who often get lumped together in the media with the pirate cart owners, but for law-enforcement and health-and-safety officials as well.

Basically, you can still get your bacon-wrapped hot dog but instead of from someone who is legally licensed and possibly clean you'll be getting it from an illegal cart that is most dirtier than the street it's being sold from.

And to top it all off,

"They told me, 'The mayor wants to make this area like New York, Times Square,' but I told them, 'Who told him we want that? The people who come here are not like that....' Why are they coming now to get us out of here? Why the abuse? Why the abuse?"

Seriously, who the fuck wanted this law in the first place? Who are the idiots that said, "Hey, Mayor, if you want my vote for re-election you'll have to get rid of the bacon-wrapped hot dog or at least make it so that I can get it only from the dirtiest hot dog carts out there." The whole thing boggles the mind.