The Short Stop Bar

Excerpt From The Scarecrow (Photo by Wendy Werris)

     The Short Stop was on Sunset in Echo Park. That made it close to Dodger Stadium, so presumably it drew its name from the baseball position. It was also close to the Los Angeles Police Academy and that made it a cop bar in its early years. It was the kind of place you'd read about in Joseph Wambaugh novels, where cops came to be with their own kind and the groupies who didn't judge them. But those days were long past. Echo Park was changing. It was getting Hollywood hip and the cops were crowded out of the Short Stop by the young professionals moving into the neighborhood. The prices went up and the cops found other watering holes. Police paraphernalia still hung on the walls but any cop who stopped in nowadays was simply misinformed.
     Still, I liked the place because it was close to downtown and on the way to my house in Hollywood.