Most people will think its about the hot dogs you can get on the street corner after a hot, sweaty night dancing away at a nightclub, or shopping in Santee Alley. Alley dogs are usually piled high with grilled onions and green peppers...sometimes they are wrapped with bacon. People crowd around and excitedly get their grub on. Yes, they are as nutritious as they sound--nitrites piled with some carcinogens and then some more nitrites.
Yum.
But when I see the term alley dogs, I'm not thinking about hot dogs. No. I'm thinking of the nasty and mangy dogs that run around the streets and alleys of L.A's industrial neighborhoods in packs. I used to work out there, off Olympic Blvd. near Soto Street. Right down the street from the Farmer John factory with it's famous pig slaughter murals. It reeked of dead a$$ around two in the afternoon like clockwork. Whenever I'd return from lunch or get ready to leave for the day, you'd see them coming: around five or six of the ugliest, dirtiest, mangiest dogs I'd ever laid eyes on.
I know what you're thinking. Those poor animals! Abandoned. Hungry. Dirty. Poor little creatures!
Before you get all Sarah McLachlan on me, I have to say that they were kind of scary. They looked diseased. Most of them were nearly bald because of the mange. They were aggressive. Hood dogs don't have an owner to teach them manners and they don't have anything to lose.
One very memorable dog was one we christened "Sunflower". He might have been a Chow mix so he had alot of fur. But it was nowhere on his body, just around his face and neck. Thus the name sunflower. He also had a rope tied around his neck that was frayed on the ends because he dragged it all over the street.
I had a co-worker who was a bleeding-heart-animals-are-people-too type of person who was always trying to feed them and calling animal services but no one really cared. Yes, it was sad. But they terrorized us. There were many days I wouldn't get out of my car because they were out there waiting for me to throw them a piece of my Sausage McMuffin. And I'd always be like, I'm a fat girl-there are no leftovers, dog. Duuh.
They reminded me of Lady and the Tramp. Hood dogs prowling through the neighborhoods, all mangy, dragging rope and whatnot.
Now that's an alley dog.
