El Rodeo

So you’ve spent the day at OB doing the OB thing, but before you pack your boogie board and umbrella into your Tercel and tote your sunburned and tired self back to Clairemont, you should eat.

You decide. You could cross the street to South Beach and get an overrated fish taco on a flour tortilla with some limp salsa fresca and wait in line to do so. Or you could go to El Rodeo and talk to the crazy guy behind the counter and the crazy shirtless guy standing behind you in line who is somehow smoking a cigarette, whistling, and talking all at the same time.

El Rodeo is a hit-or-miss place but it’s about location this time, as well as nostalgia or sympathy or something. I just like it.

I mean, if I’m with my grandma, it’s South Beach. If I want a good beer, South Beach. Oh-my-god-OB-is-so-funky, I’m-gonna-tie-my-labradoodle-out-front-and-wave-to-it-between-sips ambiance, South Beach. But the rest of the time, I’ll take a Bud tall boy from the store and my Azteca burrito down past the sea wall and enjoy living.

If the sky is open and there’s a mist hanging above the water, it might just be San Diego living at its finest (a free tip, Eileen Myles). Ahoy, a drum circle!

My wife loves the Azteca burrito: eggs, bean, salsa fresca, and sour cream. Their carnitas are sometimes excellent, but like I said, it’s all kind of hit or miss. Relax, bro, you’re half a block from the ocean.

And also the guy who sometimes works the counter has given me some great advice. That’s always a plus. And you can get a tattoo upstairs, something to ponder as you chew if that damned shirtless dude would stop chewing and whistling.

5060 Newport Ave., The People’s Republic of Ocean Beach