We drove to Eagle Rock on Thursday, February 17, 2011. I had to pick up some books at the Eagle Rock branch library that I had placed on hold through the L.A. Public Library system. We used the trip to do a couple of other things in Eagle Rock. We left home just after 4 p.m., drove west on the 210 through rather light and fast traffic. Around west Pasadena, the 210 became the 134. We exited at Figueroa, turned left to cross the bridge across the freeway and the street became Colorado Blvd. We drove west on Colorado and we found the restaurant where we would eat dinner. The Oinkster was on the north (right) side of the street. It looked about medium-sized with a high peaked roof. There was parking on both sides and there were already cars parked there even though it wasn’t yet 5 p.m. We kept going on Colorado, crossed Maywood and turned left at the light at Caspar. On the southwest corner some LAPD officers had handcuffed a young woman and man. They all seemed pretty calm, though.
After driving about two blocks south of Caspar, we found the Eagle Rock branch of the L.A. Public Library (LAPL). To the east, we could see the steeple of St. Dominic’s Catholic Church. We turned right into the large parking lot, found a space and entered. It looked rather large for a branch library. Unlike at other LAPL branches I’ve been to, at Eagle Rock I had to pick up the books from the hold shelf myself.
We left the library and drove north on Caspar retracing our route. The cops were still at the corner. They seemed to be sharing a joke with their charges. We turned left on Colorado Blvd. and left again at another major thoroughfare, Eagle Rock Blvd. We were going to pay a visit to Occidental College, or Oxy as it is known familiarly. Neither of us had ever been there before and we had been to Eagle Rock many times. My wife had friends from high school who lived there. One of them was a friend of mine from college who helped bring my wife and me together. But despite our frequent visits to the area neither of us had ever seen Occidental College. So we used this trip to finally see it. We drove about four blocks south on Eagle Rock Blvd. and turned left at Westdale Ave., a side street through a residential neighborhood. We reached a wide intersection with an all-way stop and turned left onto Campus Road.
Campus Road went uphill and we saw a sign for visitor parking for Oxy. I knew from looking at the Thomas Guide that Campus Road was the northern border of the Oxy campus. We parked along the curb on the right side of Campus Road. My wife had to remind me to do “up and away”: turn the front wheels outward since we were parked uphill with a curb. There are so few hilly streets that we have to drive on that I had forgotten about “up and away.” We exited the car and saw our first glimpse of Oxy to our right: a beige rectangular building with a sign indicating the Education Department. We had to cross a driveway to get to it and there didn’t seem to be very many sidewalks along the driveways and streets on and near campus. We found a thin sidewalk on the west side of that building that turned out to be part of Thorne Hall. There were some interesting-looking tall doors on the west side of Thorne Hall. We reached the main entrance to the hall on the south side that had three large orange, white and black banners above it. Two depicted large upright tigers reminiscent of the “Three Lions” on English national team soccer or football banners. The middle banner had the school’s seal that included a smaller upright tiger so Oxy had its “Three Tigers.” On the concrete plaza in front of Thorne Hall were life-size tiger “paw prints.”
We walked down what seemed to be the main walkway on campus. There were more beige buildings but they seemed nice, elegant, and clean. We found the student union building with the bookstore on our right. There were several students walking around, meeting up after class, discussing dinner plans. Along the fence on our left was a large blue banner for a “Thanksgiving” dinner on February 22. We later saw a sign explaining that students would be writing thank-you letters to alumni and faculty at this dinner. We noticed quickly that the campus wasn’t flat like USC and Willamette but rather on the side of a hill sloped downward to the west. This “main drag” that we were on was in the middle towards the lower west end. We walked through a plaza with lots of trees for shade and picnic tables to the Herrick Memorial Chapel & Interfaith Center with its stained glass windows. We passed the library, walked along some drives with limited sidewalks and just like that, we were off campus.
We walked on the sidewalks on the east side of Campus Road and made an exit on Stratford Road past some interesting houses. One had a large white door in a thick white wooden frame between two rows of tall hedges. It was starting to get dark but had been a fairly nice day: sunny but chilly following a day of rain. I wore the new green Timberland fleece that we had seen at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World several weeks earlier after having dinner at Paisano (see earlier review). My wife bought it for me a few days later. I needed it for the day’s chill in Eagle Rock. We made another left on Avenue 49 that led us back to the Oxy campus. We passed a large building with a parking garage in the first level. The floors above looked like those of a residence hall. We walked along an upward sloping drive and passed more residence halls and some parking lots. Over the other side of the hill we saw the baseball diamond of Anderson Field where it looked like the men’s baseball team was finishing up practice.
We walked downhill along Emmons Rd. that, naturally, had no sidewalk. We passed more residence halls and a grove of trees and bushes. The road sloped down to the middle of campus leading us to the Coons Administrative Plaza. Here we found a map on a display board that helped us get our bearings. The campus was a bit larger than it first appeared to us with two theatres higher up on the hill and a track and (football?) field lower down. We had actually seen less than half of it. A couple of Oxy employees leaving the admin building asked us if we needed help finding anything. We made our way down sidewalks and stairs to the main campus walkway where we were before. To the south we saw a bridge over one of the drives that connected two buildings.
We entered the bookstore and looked over all the orange, white, and black campus gear, books, textbooks, and school supplies. They sold pens made out of recycled clear plastic bottles, an entire shelf of books on criticism, and an Alice in Wonderland textbook with criticism and commentary on the mathematics and logic in it. One Spanish textbook, Approximociones, looked vaguely familiar. While walking back through the store along the window we found some complimentary brochures describing (now) President Barack Obama’s time at Oxy. He attended Oxy between 1979 and 1981, freshman and sophomore years before transferring to Columbia University to get his bachelor’s degree. The brochure described the residence hall in which he lived, Haines Hall, and other places on campus that were important to his time there. There were also some pens commemorating Obama’s time at Oxy with rotating messages on the side, phrases such as “Change we need,” “Yes we can! Yes we did! Yes we will!” and “From 1600 Campus Road to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.” We picked up one of these pens and since we were unsure if they were also complimentary we queued up at the cash register. A girl in front of us was asking the cashier to look up a book on data analysis, SAS and SPSS. It turned out that the pen wasn’t free and cost $2.99, but it was still worth it.
When we left the bookstore it had gotten very dark out and was nearly 6 p.m. We retraced our steps past the east side of Thorne Hall. Looking to the left (west) we could see the lights shining on the track where athletes practiced. I noticed that the north end of Thorne Hall also had a literacy center in addition to the education department. We returned to our car and drove east on Campus Road. I didn’t feel safe making a U-turn on the hilly road so we drove about a block, turned left on the curving Ridgeview Avenue that merged into Avenue 46 that took us back to Eagle Rock Blvd. We turned right and drove north on Eagle Rock Blvd. to Colorado Blvd. where we also turned right. After driving a few blocks east, we turned left into the western parking lot of The Oinkster. The restaurant was hard to miss even in the early evening darkness. It has a large lighted sign with its name and some other signs saying “Burgers,” “Chicken” and sandwiches. My wife had first read about it in Los Angeles magazine and many years ago we had eaten at the chef’s earlier restaurant Max in Sherman Oaks where we spotted James Van Der Beek. When we arrived there both parking lots looked almost full.
The restaurant itself was also nearly full and there was a long queue to get to the counter to order. The Oinkster is not very big. On the left of the queue were small tables and booths and on the right were couches and chairs for a more lounge-type dining experience. There was also some counter seating with stools opposite the back ordering counter. A large menu was posted above and behind the back counter and on the wall was a framed likeness of Guy Fieri with his autograph. We also grabbed a take-home menu. It had large sections for sandwiches and salads, smaller sections for rotisserie chicken in various permutations, pastrami and BBQ pulled pork by the pound, sides, desserts, milkshakes and malts (including seasonal flavors featuring Fosselman’s ice cream), and beverages. They had many beverages displayed on the counter including boxed water that came in a carton. When we got to the front of the queue we placed our orders. My wife saw a board announcing their new dulce de leche milkshake. The cashier gave us our beverages and a number on a stand so the server could find us.
The only seating we could find was along the counter opposite the ordering counter down on the west end where they kept all the condiments and utensils. While waiting we tried our beverages. I had a Boylan’s Root Beer that was made with cane sugar and yucca root extract. It tasted pretty good, not too sweet and a bit spicy. I would give it no more than 4 out of 5. My wife enjoyed her Oinksterade that combined both orange and lemon flavors along with cane sugar. She let me try some and I liked it. It wasn’t too sweet like most lemonade. They brought us our orders fairly quickly. We both got sandwiches that came in small baskets. The sandwiches themselves were wrapped up in paper to keep all the ingredients inside. I enjoyed by BBQ pulled pork sandwich very much. It came with a small container of tangy vinegar Carolina BBQ sauce that was interesting but I’m not sure I needed it. The sandwiches contained caramelized onions and red cabbage slaw that were both good. But the best part was the pulled pork itself: shreds of pork slow roasted and smoked to perfection. The best part was the smoky flavor of the pork. As I got close to finishing each sandwich half they got a bit messy. I gladly picked out every shred of the pork with a plastic fork. My wife got the Oinkster pastrami sandwich made with house-cured and smoked pastrami that came in thick slices. It also contained gruyere cheese, caramelized onion and red cabbage slaw. It came with a pickle on the side. My wife enjoyed her sandwich very much, though it was so much food that she wasn’t quite ready for her dessert. The Oinkster was crowded for the entire time we were there. When we left we noticed that some people were sitting outside in the cold and darkness.
We drove home on the 210 that had some rush hour traffic. It took just a bit under an hour. By the time we arrived home my wife was ready for her dessert: the PB&J cupcake. The cashier had handed it to us in a clear plastic container right after we ordered. It was slightly larger for a cupcake and had a swirl of peanut butter icing on top. Enclosed in the cake exterior were separate fillings of peanut butter and jelly both with just the right sweetness for a dessert.
We’re glad we could finally visit Oxy and have dinner at The Oinkster. Since our purpose of going to Eagle Rock was to get library books, we’ll have to go back to return them giving us an excuse to try The Oinkster again.
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