Little Hits

Youth Gone Mad — Oki Dogs
(Posh Boy Records 45, 1981)

Of the Big Three of iconic L.A. hot dog joints, I’ve eaten at the now-closed Tail o’ the Pup (which was just okay as a dog, but it’s hard to resist a building shaped like a loaded hot dog) and I’ve eaten at Pink’s, but I’ve never eaten at Oki Dogs, which means I’ve never tried their signature dish, which is a flour tortilla wrapped around a hot dog, chili, and rather inexplicably, pastrami. The original Oki Dogs was on Santa Monica Boulevard, a few blocks from Pink’s, and it was a well-known punk hangout back in the hardcore days: there’s a mildly famous photo by Ed Culver, the guy who shot most of the L.A. punk photos, called “Oki Dogs” that’s just a close-up of some punk kids’ boots in the parking lot. (For a long period in the mid-80s, IRS Records used to sell poster-size prints of this photo on their inner sleeves next to the t-shirts and things with their own logo.) The clientele and the attendant hassles of same eventually got that place shut down and reopened a ways away on Fairfax. There’s also supposedly a place on Pico called Oki’s Dog that’s an unrelated shameless rip-off, but I’ve never eaten there either.

So anyway, that’s what Oki Dogs is. “Oki Dogs” is the flipside of the first single by L.A. hardcore act Youth Gone Mad, who I think have been around off and on ever since 1980 or so. I have a surprisingly solid ’90s record by them called Dayjob, and they also released an EP a few years ago that apparently was the last record Dee Dee Ramone ever played on. Looking them up just now, I learned the mildly startling fact that Youth Gone Mad’s singer and guitarist, Paul “Ena” Kostabi, was also in the first lineup of White Zombie. (Also, his brother Mark is an artist, with the covers of Guns N Roses’ Use Your Illusion albums among his credits.) They’re a fine, underrated band, but this manic piece of L.A. hardcore, as funny and weird and rocking as anything ever done in the style, remains their high point. Personally, my favorite part is at the end, when drummer Tami Esquivel screams in frustration “I don’t even know how this place is still open!” Alongside the Descendants’ “Weinerschnitzel,” this is my favorite hot-dog-related L.A. punk song. Oh, and Lawndale’s “The Days of Pup ‘N’ Taco.” Except that was ruined for me slightly: the last two remaining Pup ‘n’ Tacos in the world were in Albuquerque (slightly renamed Pop ‘n’ Taco, as required when Taco Bell bought the rest of the chain in the 80s) when I lived there, one of them right across the street from the IT company I worked at. I’m pretty sure I got food poisoning off a taco burger there once.

–Stewart Mason