At Temple and Glendale, an only-in-L.A. tableau that’s easy to pass by

The intersection of Temple Street and Glendale Boulevard on the edge of Echo Park is so aggressively unattractive, you’re tempted to close your eyes as you pass by.

On its four points are a gas station, a collision center, a carwash and a recreation center, none of which will ever make it onto a postcard. And the backdrop for the gritty tableau is the Hollywood Freeway, which belches its foul breath over this unprosecuted felony of urban planning.

But over the years, on my daily commute, I began to see something else. There seemed to be more life on the tennis courts at the rec center. And the $1 taco stand in the parking lot of the $3, 24-hour carwash became a taco truck and grew more popular by the day.

Or, I should say, by the evening, when the glorious scent of seared taco meat overpowers vehicular fumes and the intersection of Temple and Glendale is an all-purpose, low-cost, moonlit crossroads of the city.

Here you’ll see an only-in-L.A. cast of nighthawks, immigrants, insomniacs, Dodgers fans, homeless people, hipsters, low-wage grinders, industry players, families, couples and sweaty tennis hackers who play on the free public courts and sometimes wander across the street and munch tacos under the carwash’s palm trees, with the flashing neon sign on Leo’s taco truck announcing that closing time is 4 a.m.

It’s a cheap date in an expensive city — the kind of place you don’t even think about as a place but long for if you ever leave.

And it’s full of narratives you’ll never know about if you make the same mistake we all make: the mistake of driving by and never getting out of the car.

One night I wandered over to the tennis courts. They’re often packed as late as midnight, mostly with men playing doubles. Brendan Maloney, one of the regulars, was taking a cigarette break.

“I scream and yell a lot, so I can’t play on clay courts,” he said, noting that the nonstop symphony of engines and horns, with occasional percussive flourishes when vehicles collide, tends to mute his outbursts.

Maloney, who said he’s into metaphysics and works as a freelance energy healing specialist, pointed me to Howe Watanapun, a retired parking valet who identified himself as one of the founders of the Echo Park Night Tennis Club.

“If you came out at night two years ago, there was nobody here,” said Watanapun.

Most people from the neighborhood played in the daytime, but Watanapun began recruiting friends and people he met on the courts and formed a club that has grown to more than 50 members. Maloney was one of those guys, said Watanapun, who has managed to get Maloney to control his language, especially when kids are around, because the club aims for a clean image and good sportsmanship.

“Look at this,” Watanapun said, using his smartphone to pull up a club logo he was designing for the T-shirts he planned to order.

The logo is sharp, two rackets crossed against a midnight blue backdrop. Watanapun said the plan is to seek out kids who use the rec center and offer them free T-shirts and free lessons, too, so they can get some exercise and be a part of a positive enterprise that builds community.

Whatever their ethnicity, they’ll fit in nicely. Watanapun, who is Thai, said club members are Laotian, Chinese, Filipino, Latino, African American, white, Burmese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indonesian and probably some other ethnicities he couldn’t recall. They do all different kinds of work, he said, but nobody talks about that. They talk about forehands and backhands.

Thirty years ago, Watanapun said, this was a scary neighborhood.

“Now you’re in the heart of everything.”

Taco scion Leo Sanchez, who grew up in Oaxaca, told me he worked in a Los Angeles restaurant, saved his nickels and dimes and started his own business with his brother. They now have four trucks. The Echo Park operation sells as many as 800 to 1,000 tacos a day, he said.

The specialty is tacos al pastor, and Sanchez’s chef cleaves slices of flame-grilled pork off a vertical rotisserie, or trompo. Then, with the flair of Zorro, he flicks a sliver of fresh pineapple from the top of the rotisserie and uses a warm tortilla to snag it midair.

“I wouldn’t call it drunk-people food because it’s too good,” Sherri Allage, 24, said one night as she and a date, Ray Minniefield, dined in a fenced-off area in the carwash parking lot, palms overhead.

You can learn a lot about people, they said, by whether they think a dinner of $1 tacos at a carwash is an appropriate date.

“You can weed out the snobs,” Minniefield said.

Gabriel Gonzalez, a fashion designer, was dining nearby with his 10-year-old daughter, Emily. They and the rest of the family often drop by after evening services at their church, and on this night, father and daughter had seven tacos between them.

“You can wash your car for $3, buy $10 worth of gas and pay $7 for dinner. That’s a $20 night, and you can play soccer or basketball across the street,” said Gabriel.

“And you can walk to the lake,” said Emily, noting that the lotuses were in full glory.

Spencer Somers, who lives nearby and works as a creative director for an advertising company, chatted with me while he waited for his taco order. I told him I had driven by the intersection a thousand times without realizing how iconic it was, with its mad juxtaposition of athletic fields, highway exhaust and street food.

“It’s so normal, that’s what makes it iconic,” Somers said. “L.A. is such a big mess in the best way. It’s full of experiences that you have to curate for yourself.”

The experience at Temple and Glendale included lumbering jetliners arcing across the sky, the downtown high-rises sparkling in the distance, tennis balls flying, and slices of pineapple making perfect landings on warm tortillas.

A summer night in Los Angeles.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

@LATstevelopez