Profile: The Great Gaping Brown Hole

There it stands.

As you travel east on Amar road in La Puente you spot it in the distance: the Vortex. It appears to be sucking you in like a great brown hole in space, Robert Forster in the copilot seat, your car helpless to its sheer size and awesome sucking ability. As you slowly draw near it, it dawns on you that it’s damn near impossible to resist the ultimate Freudian experience of driving your car through its orifice and being shat out the backdoor.

Had they the time, I’ve no doubt the painters would’ve finished the sentence on The Donut Hole’s sign: “It’s the quality of our water. Our water is wayyy fresh.” Mind you, I’m not implying that the quality of anything else, say perhaps the orange and chocolate crullers, is anything less than stellar at 3pm on a weekday afternoon. Oh no no. You didn’t hear it here. “It’s the quality you’d expect from two-day-old crullers?” For shame. You didn’t hear it here.

Surprise! This man awaits you inside the tube

Surprise again! An identical brown hole ultimately defecates your car, crullers, water bottles, arcade fire cds and all. You lazy son of a bitch, you

That said, La Puente’s The Donut Hole has Randy’s and all the other would-be- Randy’s beat, hands down, in the lazy American convenience factor. Exactly how are you going to be able to sit on your lazy fat ass and fiddle with the stereo while ordering donuts, paying for them, yawning, peering disinterestedly in the rearview mirror at the crusty sugared flecks stuck to your beard, waving off the impatient chubmaster in the tube behind you, and eventually driving off in air-conditioned comfort at Randy’s? Answer: As it turns out, you can actually do all of that and more at Randy’s drive-up window… but you won’t be inside a tube.

Go ahead though. Go to La Puente, drive anywhere near the proximity of the great gaping brown hole, and try not to drive through it. Let me know how you fare.

The Donut Hole
15300 East Amar Road
La Puente