The belt used to belong to his father. Black leather, silver stitching, “RUBEN” spelled across the side with the initials “R.V.” on the buckle, for Ruben Vallejo, a name both men share. Now it sits on the waist of the younger Vallejo as he gets ready for a night out at the Pico Rivera Sports Arena, a place he’s been to “over 50 times,” he says, but this one’s special. He tucks in his thrifted button-up shirt, adjusts his belt buckle and looks in the mirror.
For the Vallejo family, the arena is a second home and dancing there is tradition. It stands as a cultural landmark for Los Angeles’ Mexican community, hosting decades of concerts, rodeos and community celebrations. Vallejo’s parents first started going in the early ’90s, when banda and corridos began echoing across L.A. Tonight, the beloved crooner Pancho Barraza is performing and Vallejo is going with his mom, sister, aunt and godmother.
At 22, Vallejo doesn’t see música regional Mexicana as nostalgia — it’s simply who he is, something he wears, dances to and claims as his own. “I want to revive this and let other people know that this art and culture is still alive,” says Vallejo. “From the way that I dress, from the music I listen to, I want to let everybody know that the kids like this.”
It’s a little past 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday in late October, and the sound of a live banda carries from a small Mexican restaurant near the Vallejo family’s Mid-City home as the excitement for the night builds. The horns and tambora spill into the street as the neighborhood celebrates early Día de los Muertos festivities. Inside, Vallejo opens the door to his storybook bungalow, where his parents lounge in the living room. But it’s his bedroom that tells you who he is — a space that feels like a paisa museum.
Thrifted banda puffer jackets hang on the closet wall: Banda Recodo, Banda Machos, El Coyote y su Banda Tierra Santa. Stacks of CDs and cassette tapes line his dresser, from Banda El Limón to Banda Móvil and a signed Pepe Aguilar. On one wall, a small black-and-white watercolor of Chalino Sánchez he painted himself hangs beside a framed Mexico 1998 World Cup jersey. “Everything started with my grandpa,” Vallejo says. “He was a trombone player and played in a banda in my mom’s hometown in Jalisco.”
Music runs in the family. His uncles started a group called Banda La Movida, and Vallejo is still teaching himself acoustic guitar when he’s not apprenticing as a hat maker at Márquez Clásico, crafting tejanas and sombreros de charro.
“I feel like being an old soul gives people a sense of how things used to be back in the day,” he says of the intergenerational bridge between his work and personal interests. “That connection is something so needed right now.”
Beyond the banda memorabilia, the real story lives in the old family photos — snapshots of backyard parties, his parents in full ’90s vaquero style in L.A. parking lots and a large framed portrait of his uncles from Banda La Movida, posing in matching blue jackets and white tejanas.
“This is a picture of us in the [Pico Rivera Sports Arena] parking lot. We’d go to support my cousins in a battle of the bandas. Which also meant fan clubs against fan clubs. The pants were a lot more baggy then,” explains Vallejo’s mother, Maria Aracely, in Spanish.
Vallejo’s look for the night is simple but intentional: a black tejana from Márquez Clásico, a thrifted black-and-white vaquero-style button-up patterned with deer silhouettes, loose “pantalones de elefante,” as he calls them, his dad’s brown snakeskin boots, and, of course, the embroidered belt that ties it all together.
“This is very Pancho Barraza-style, especially with the venado shirt. I looked up old videos of him performing on YouTube. I do that a lot with these older banda looks,” Vallejo says.
A rustic leather embroidered bandana with “Banda La Movida” stitched vertically hangs from his left pocket — a keepsake his mom held onto from her brothers’ group back in the day.
Running fashionably late, Vallejo arrives at Barraza’s concert with less than an hour to spare, but he seems unbothered. His mom and older sister, Jennifer, are there, along with his aunt and godmother. A mix of mud and alcohol hangs in the air as the family makes their way across the fake grass tarps covering the lower level of the arena. Barraza is onstage with a mariachi accompanying his banda. With the amount of people still out drinking and dancing, it’s hard to believe it’s past 10 o’clock on a Sunday night.
Walking past the stands, Vallejo’s mother is in awe as she points out a certain upper level section of the arena and recalls the amount of times she would sit there and see countless bandas before she had Ruben and his sister. As the concert nears the end, Barraza closes with one of Vallejo’s favorite songs, “Mi Enemigo El Amor,” which Vallejo belts out, jokingly heartbroken.
“I hadn’t seen him live yet and the ambiente here feels great because everyone here is connected to the music. Even though we’re in L.A. this feels like home, like Mexico.”
Frank X. Rojas is a Los Angeles native who writes about culture, style and the people shaping his city. His stories live in the quiet details that define L.A.
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