If you’re looking for a place to watch a Dodgers game, there’s a pizza place not far from Dodger Stadium called LaSorted’s. If you know, you know. If you don’t know, this is probably not the place for you.
The walls are almost entirely covered with Dodgers memorabilia: yearbooks, programs, newspapers, magazine covers, ads, record albums, even a thermometer that says “1988 World Champions” with portraits of Vin Scully, Don Drysdale and Ross Porter.
The menu includes a pizza called the Mookie, with three cheeses, garlic, mushrooms and mushroom cream.
“The original pizza was called the Ghost just because it was the Halloween color,” owner Tommy Brockett said. “Then we signed Mookie [Betts]. It just rhymes. “
We would like to extend a warm welcome to our World Series guests from one of the greatest cities in the world, Toronto. In Toronto, fans attend games as God intended: by taking public transit and being dropped off directly at the stadium, because the public experience of professional sports should include riding there.
In Los Angeles, we built a light rail line that stops two miles from the airport, and we have a train station two miles from Dodger Stadium. For many fans, if they want to take public transportation to the game, they have to go to the train station first.
Currently, you can take a shuttle from Union Station. The shuttle, along with sister shuttles from the South Bay, served a record 400,000 passengers this season, according to Metro. The Dodgers had a driver for every 10 tickets sold.
Former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt believes he can do better. In 2018, McCourt debuted a cable car from Union Station to Dodger Stadium, eventually promising free rides for fans.
Former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt appeared on a Fox Business Network show in January.
(Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
As the project makes its way through various bureaucracies, some Chinatown residents have protested that the gondola would fly too low over homes and could damage the beloved park and add traffic to an already crowded neighborhood.
Brockett’s Pizza is located in Chinatown. He opened the store last October, the day the Dodgers eliminated the San Diego Padres in the National League Division Series and three years after he opened the original LaSorted’s store in Silver Lake. He signed a 10-year lease.
“Whether the cable car is here or not, I’ll be here,” he said.
Brockett doesn’t necessarily share the concerns of his Chinatown neighbors. He believed the cable car would be cool, and if it brought more foot traffic and his customers to Chinatown, that would be a welcome bonus.
“I just don’t trust the people behind it,” Brockett said.
How can McCourt win his trust?
“If we had known,” Brockett said.
Owner Tommy Brockert stands inside LaSorted’s, a Dodgers-themed pizza restaurant in Chinatown.
McCourt sold the Dodgers out of bankruptcy court in 2012, but he retained half ownership of the parking lots surrounding the stadium.
“Just bringing the cable car there? Is that so?” Brockett said. “If you really just think about the business side of it, why would someone who owns a parking lot and makes money off people parking their cars want to let people go there for free?
“If you own a parking lot, do you also build something in the parking lot?”
Brockett is not necessarily opposed to developing the Dodger Stadium parking lot. Cities need housing. The modern stadium houses restaurants, bars and shops surrounding the pitch. Brockett might even consider opening a LaSorted’s store there.
“The gondola is not just about Dodger Stadium,” Ed Reyes, a stadium district councilman when McCourt owned the Dodgers, said at a recent rally of gondola opponents. “It’s about creating a whole new set of shopping centers and destinations that we might not be able to afford.”
A rendering of a proposed cable car that would transport fans from Union Station to Dodger Stadium.
(Los Angeles SkyTrain)
Joshua Schank said in a June op-ed in the Los Angeles Daily News that the gondola project would “break new ground for critical housing development.”
McCourt and his attorney said the board’s only proposal now is for the cable car itself, and any subsequent plans to develop the Dodger Stadium parking lot would be subject to an entirely new approval process that would involve significant zoning changes and planning hearings. The Dodgers’ current owners could also veto any development there.
Reyes was on the job when McCourt proposed building restaurants, shops, team offices, a team museum, parking lots and parkland around the stadium during its ownership, but an appeals court ruling in May rejected the “speculative” premise that building a cable car now would necessarily lead to massive development since McCourt proposed it in 2008.
Over the course of years of considering a cable car, a Metro document framed the question this way: “Could an aerial tram to Dodger Stadium relieve traffic congestion, clean the air and spark joy?”
Project proponents will say yes, yes, of course. Project opponents will say no, probably not, and definitely no.
Brockett really doesn’t have time for all the politics. He has another pizza to make, maybe even for Bates.
He attended an event in support of the Bates Foundation and took the opportunity to introduce Bates to Mookie Pizza and all its toppings. He said he told Bates he would change the ingredients if Bates wanted to.
He did it.
“Sun-dried tomatoes, chicken, onions and spinach,” Brockett said. “So I’m working on it.
“Any other player, if they have a favorite pizza, I’ll put that on the menu, too.”
