Mexico vs. South Korea World Cup: Live updates, how to watch

Santa Ana has long been a soccer-mad town, the type of place where amateur leagues have existed for decades, soccer stores seem as common as Catholic churches and park space is at such a premium that children play in the parking lots of county government buildings after workers leave for the day. After any big win for Mexico’s men’s football squad, thousands of ecstatic fans gather at the intersection of Bristol Street and McFadden Avenue well into the night.

But when Spain beat the Netherlands in the FIFA World Cup final in 2010, Santa Ana’s Fourth Street — the historical cultural and economic heart of Latino Orange County — was dead.

The city was in the height of its gentrification era, when bureaucrats were handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidies to out-of-towners with hipster businesses in a no-so-subtle way to push out working class Latinos.

The cantinas that my father frequented in the 1970s during his borracho days were long gone. Few of the bars and restaurants that took their place bothered to air the World Cup finale. Only one restaurant, Lola Gaspar, had a bona fide watch party, and I remember scoffing as a group of besotted gringos wearing Barcelona and Real Madrid jerseys clumsily kicked a soccer ball around after the match.

At that point, I predicted that Santa Ana would turn into a Silver Lake or Echo Park, a formerly diverse neighborhood turned insufferable and unrecognizable by newcomers. But a funny thing happened over the years: The children of those working class Latinos grew up and began reclaiming La Cuatro for themselves.

Today, downtown Santa Ana is packed with chipster — Chicano hipster — businesses, from coffee houses to barber shops, restaurants to vintage shops. And they have been slammed this World Cup.

Last night, Colombians wearing the country’s traditional bright yellow jersey were dancing to cumbias at Chapter One: The Modern Bistro long after Los Cafeteros beat Uzbekistan 2-1. As I write this from my wife’s Alta Baja Market, people are wandering around wearing one El Tri jersey or another. Cars wave el tricolor; vendors are setting up pop-up tents to sell Mexico flags, noisemakers and anything red, white and green.

If Mexico beats South Korea tonight, expect the pachangas in downtown Santa Ana to last long into the night. And expect me to be in the middle cheering loudly — not just for El Tri’s triumph, but for the Reconquista of downtown SanTana through soccer. We did it, raza.