Nick Frousakis went to his grave in December, and one of his most loyal customers, Raul Sousa, followed him into the ground the very next day, old age doing both of them in.
"Nobody wants to sit there now," said Diego Romero, pointing to where Sousa used to hold forth at Jim's Burgers, State and 1st in Boyle Heights.
But the gang still shows up most weekdays to carry on the tradition despite the absence of Frousakis, a Greek-born businessman who had the good sense to put tacos up on the board next to hamburgers.
They drink coffee from Styrofoam cups. They soak up the sun. And they talk.
Life, death, sports, women, politics.
It was the last of those subjects I wanted to hear about last week. Latinos turned out as never before in the California presidential primary, accounting for 30% of the Democratic vote. As a group, Latinos sent an early valentine to Hillary Clinton, voting for her by a 2-1 ratio.
I wanted to know why, but first I had to find some Clinton voters. So which candidate did these guys like?
"Clinton," three men said in unison when I sat down Thursday.
"Clinton," said three different men when I took a seat at the same table Friday.
Altogether, four of the six said they had actually voted. One is a legal resident but not a citizen, and the other just didn't make it to the polls.
The state's Latinos are overwhelmingly Democratic, and none of the Jim's crowd even considered voting for a Republican, even though Sen. John McCain supported a path to legal status for many illegal immigrants.
"They're for the greedy corporations," said retired landscaper Feliz Botello. "They don't care about us and our people."
He might get some disagreement from the estimated 10% of the state's Republican voters who happen to be Latino.
So why Clinton instead of Obama?
"El sabe menos [He knows less]," Roberto Luz, a mariachi, said in Spanish of Barack Obama.
"¿Que ha hecho, el? [What has he done?]," echoed Joaquin Vega, who used to run the auto repair shop across the street.
Most of the comments were similarly straightforward. It didn't hurt that L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa supported Clinton, said the men.
But if I had to list the top reasons the men liked Clinton over Obama or a Republican candidate, the order would go something like this:
