Bars & Clubs

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• Best Place to Chill Just Over the Hill

  Skinny's Lounge

  Skinny's Lounge is everything you'd want in a NoHo nightspot — equal parts cool, slick, comfortable and dark, like, say, a Hollywood bar/lounge, except, being over the hill, just a bit more laid-back. There's comfortably plush seating; dark, earthy, off-reddish tones in the décor; and an interesting L-shaped configuration with an ample curved bar and an outstanding, classic-lounge-y recessed and… More >>

• Best Gay Bar For Straight Dates

  The Other Side - CLOSED

  Old-school piano bar The Other Side is hidden behind the cozy Flying Leap Cafe in the heart of Silver Lake, but the vibe inside is worlds away from most of the newish attractions in the neighborhood. Aside from dirt-cheap drinks and charmingly cheesy decor (think red-white-and-blue streamers for Independence Day), the Other Side's primary selling point is its talent. Each… More >>

• Best Non-Sports Sports Bar

  Snake Pit Ale House

  I am fundamentally allergic to sports bars. I am also a diehard, obsessive Dodgers fan (this past season, the ongoing McCourt bankruptcy drama only made following the day-to-day game play more exciting — it was like a dysfunctional family epic in 162 three-hour parts). It can be hard enough to find a place to watch a Dodger game amid an… More >>

• Best Bar to Get Lit

  Rosewood Tavern

  Rosewood Tavern, a newish gastropub specializing in steak, beer and whiskey, is a much-needed addition to the Fairfax District strip. Finally, there's a place for locals to drink grown-up drinks that isn't the oft-douchey dance bar the Dime; finally, there's a place to get a real meal before or after a show at Cinefamily that isn't Canter's. But Rosewood Tavern… More >>

• Best Dive Bar to Take Out-of-Towners

  Tattle Tale Room

  So you've got friends or relatives coming in from out of town, and you want to swiftly disabuse them of the notion that Los Angeles is all swimming pools, movie stars and whatever other bullshit they've seen on Entourage. You need to take them to the Tattle Tale Room. Close enough to the airport that it can be a visitor's… More >>

• Best Even Happier Hour/DJ Combo

  Falls Lounge

  Some people are lucky enough to be able to leave work at 5 and catch that glorious window of time known as happy hour. For the rest of us, however, the Falls Lounge's schedule is more accommodating, with a later happy hour that runs from 6 to 9 p.m. It's a cozy yet cool spot bearing comfy couches lining the… More >>

• Best Celebrity Hangout You Actually Can Get Into

  Bar Marmont

  For sure, Bar Marmont features plenty of wannabe and real-life starlets draped in haute-hippie couture most nights of the week. Sundays, however, tend to be sparsely populated and low-key. Could it be because the Sunday night special is buttermilk fried chicken with all the fixins? You know that's not in the diets of the typical waify crews, and besides, you… More >>

• Best Hip-Hop Jukebox in a Dive Bar

  Hank's Bar

  Downtown L.A. is slowly becoming the hippest address in the city, but a few grimy spots remain. Not far from the flashing lights of the Staples Center and the prefab L.A. Live, Hank's Bar offers a pleasantly divey respite. Keep in mind, however, that Hank's is not fancy, and there's no lingering. In fact, at 1:59 a.m. sharp the bartender… More >>

• Best Place to Watch EPL Soccer on Sunday Mornings

  Lucky Baldwin's

  Soccer fans have passed the point where they need to defend themselves to know-nothing blowhards like Bill Plaschke. Thanks to Phil Anschutz and the miracle of satellite TV, fans in L.A. are pretty well set up. The only nagging problem is the eight-hour time difference between the U.K. and the West Coast, which means English Premier League games kick off… More >>

• Best Place to Get Your Freak On

  Freak City

  "Discos don't open till after dark/And it ain't till 12 till the party really starts," goes the Whodini song, and indeed it's fair to say that at Freak City the partying goes until very late. A combination retail and underground-events space in the heart of Hollywood, the spot is decorated by enough spray-can art, old vinyl and chain-link fencing to… More >>

• Best Karaoke Night

  Jewel's Catch One's Ground Control

  Monday isn't typically the town's most happening night, but it does have the town's most happening karaoke. Ground Control at Jewel's Catch One has a devoted cult following that feels like a family. Everyone's rooting for you, and if you screw up the words or can't carry a tune, often you'll get some good-natured help from the crowd. But what… More >>

• Best Bar to Stumble Upon New Cocktails

  Harvard & Stone

  Past the beautifully groomed pompadour of the Harvard & Stone doorman, beyond the tractor-seat barstools and chicken-feeder light fixtures is the back bar at this World War II–style watering hole in East Hollywood. Dubbed R&D, or "research and development," this is an active cocktail test kitchen where the bar menu changes every night with guest mixologists on site. The venerable… More >>

• Best Really Hidden Well-Known Bar

  Bar 1886

  Waiting for less than five minutes from when you arrive at Bar 1886, to when you're taking the first sip from a beverage, isn't very long when your cocktail is one of the many sprung from the teachings of Aidan Demarest (Seven Grand, the Edison). But because Bar 1886 is located in the middle of nowhere in Pasadena, skulking in… More >>

• Best Man Cave Downtown

  Seven Grand

  Before spirit-themed bars were all the rage, there was Seven Grand. It may not be the biggest or sexiest bar downtown, but it's the best goddamn place to do the following things, at your leisure, in your own time: Sip a real Old-Fashioned (no cherries whatsoever in sight); puff a cigar, which can be purchased from the bartender and smoked… More >>

• Best Place to Practice Karaoke Privately

  Rosen Music Studio

  Koreatown's Brass Monkey is one of the city's better karaoke venues. The singers there usually know what they're doing, and they kill it. Every time. It's intimidating. How can you become one of them? Practice, practice, practice. But you don't want to be polishing your game in front of a crowd of strangers. You want a booth. And the best… More >>

• Best Sexy Dance Club

  Mr. Black

  At Mr. Black, the waiters' uniforms consist of top hats, bow ties and bare butts, as seen through G-strings and chaps. But the club's sexy vibe goes beyond the round rumps on display. After creator Luke Nero made a smooth transition to L.A. from New York (where the club originated) a year ago, Mr. Black (at Bardot, above Avalon) quickly… More >>

• Best Grill-Your-Own-Steak Bar

  Venice Room

  While the allusions to owner Dominic Lombardo and Rat Packer attitude with just a hint of made-guy style run rampant in this landmark watering hole, the Venice Room really is a neighborhood joint with longtime regulars who've been singing along to Big Al's eclectic, encyclopedic collection of karaoke for years now. And you can't go wrong with a thick New… More >>

• Best Place to Sit on a Plastic-Covered Stuffed Chair and Drink Wine While Admiring Luchador Art

  Eastside Luv

  There are hip bars that try to be rec rooms and cool bars that try to be speakeasies, but the bar that replicates your real or imaginary abuela's living room and empowers locals to invest in their neighborhood is by far the most badass bar in L.A. That spectacular spot is Eastside Luv. The stuffed lounge chairs at the bar… More >>

• Best Taiwanese-Themed Sports Bar

  Uncle Yu's Indian Theme Restaurant

  What's in a name? In the case of Uncle Yu's Indian Theme Restaurant, everything and nothing. Waitresses clad in red tank tops, black shorts and UGGs, and sporting a feather in their hair, cheerfully greet you in Mandarin upon entry at the place nicknamed "the Taiwanese Hooters." Faux Western in decor, with fake log tables, wolf skin and faux Native… More >>

• Best LGBT Disco

  A Club Called Rhonda

  Every second Saturday of every month for the last three years, A Club Called Rhonda's crowd has spilled more voluptuously from El Cid — the flamenco dinner club that hosts it — onto the patio, up some darling switchbacks and out along Sunset Boulevard. The more popular it gets, the more nights we must elbow past wallflowers and rubberneckers in… More >>

• Best Bar Atmosphere

  Hemingway's

  Love liquor and great literature? You're certainly not the first. There's something romantic about imagining a tortured genius of yesteryear crafting fantastical tales on a noisy old typewriter, a bottle of rye by his side. Of course, no one brings to mind this image more than Ernest Hemingway, who wiled away many of his days in dingy American dives and… More >>

• Best Gay Country Line-Dancing

  Oil Can Harry's

  Think it's surreal to see dozens of cowboys lined up butts to nuts on Ventura Boulevard early on a Tuesday evening? Not in the slightest. Oil Can Harry's has been in business since 1968, and with one visit you know why. Gay or straight, Oil Can Harry's is a great place to get over yourself: friendly, nonjudgmental and with drink… More >>

• Best Dive Bar, South Bay Division

  Shellback Tavern

  Located just 50 yards up from the Manhattan Beach Pier with the best views in the South Bay, the Shellback Tavern started life in 1955 as a bait-and-tackle shop where you could also pick up a couple of six-packs. Still housed in the original concrete-sided box, it is the last of the no-shoes, no-shirt, no-problem bars that once dominated Los… More >>

• Best Place to Dance in Your Underwear, Unwatched

  Akbar

  It was one of those nights. Me and my favorite lonely single girlfriend wanted to practice our dance moves with abandon. Real abandon, the kind that is inadvisable when cute, straight guys might be watching. But where to go? Outside of Ryan Heffington's dance classes, there's only one dance floor in Silver Lake where girls, biological and otherwise, can truly… More >>

• Best Superclub Night

  Avaland

  With Las Vegas putting unheard-of cash on the table for top DJs, and with increasing competition from previously "off" nights, such as Monday (Monday Social), Wednesday (Ecco Ultra Lounge) and Friday (Vanguard), it's hard for a dance music pimp. But if anything, the new dance music hysteria that brought more than 200,000 to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for Electric Daisy… More >>

• Best Lakers/Dodgers Sports Bar

  John O'Groats Grille & Pub

  John O'Groats Grille & Pub's fat menu starts with huge breakfasts for the early-morning, crazy soccer fans and expands to a vast dinner selection for Laker games. This newish establishment, in a San Fernando Valley–luxe suburban fantasy setting, includes an elegant patio in a grove of low-water trees, a well-appointed downstairs spillover room for big games or special parties, complete… More >>

• Best Undercover Tiki Bar

  Cana

  Cana doesn't sport moai, tappan cloth or any of the decorative signifiers that scream "tiki fetish," but bar manager Allan Katz makes a convincing case that tiki drinks are the missing evolutionary link between America's golden cocktail era and its swinging cocktail revival. The drinks are precise, nuanced and clever, full of creative riffs on classic recipes. The sharp Tennessee… More >>

• Best Supercalifragilistic Rooftop Bar

  Peninsula Beverly Hills

  At the Peninsula Beverly Hills, once you breeze past the (rumored-to-be) high-end hookers lounging in their sultry unaffordables at the imposing Club Bar on the hotel's ground floor, your goal is to snag a fine, cushiony perch at a poolside seat in the Roof Garden's bar several floors above. From the elevator, a passageway leading to the pool, restaurant and… More >>

• Best PBR With a Side of Boobs

  Footsies

  Naked people are naked people, but it's where you find the images of them that makes all the difference. Put them in a sleazy mag, flipping out from the centerfold: trashy smut. Hang them on a wall: art! The latter is the case at Footsies, our latest favorite dark hipster bar in Cypress Park. Footsies, with its trendy disposition, retro… More >>

• Best Westside Karaoke Bar Where Nobody Knows Your Name

  Karaoke Bleu

  In a town where there's Porn Star Karaoke, VIP karaoke rooms and even American Idol, it's nice to know you can bring your drunken singing back to basics — a place with whisky, two microphones and a sure round of applause. Karaoke Bleu in West L.A.'s Little Osaka neighborhood has been around nearly 20 years. It can throw off the… More >>

• Best Bar Togs

  The Spare Room

  The lovely lanes at The Spare Room, shined with the tears of incorporeal former starlets, are indeed functional. But when it comes to bowling at the Roosevelt's recondite cocktail haunt, it's harder to pick up a spare than it is to pick up a pair — a pair of George Esquivel loafers. The pointy, two-toned Oxfords in butter-soft black and… More >>

• Best Industrial Club

  Das Bunker

  Das Bunker is more than a dance club, it's purgatory. Walk into this dark world and you will encounter dancing demons, vampy vixens and, most shockingly, regulars who are as friendly as they are fiendish-looking. The long-running industrial party (15 years!) packs the expansive Mid-City club space Catch One weekly, with guest DJs spinning the loudest, heaviest power noise and… More >>

• Best Latin Restaurant-Turned-Nightclub to Pretend It's Your Quinceanera

  El Baron

  The dance floor at El Baron — only a smidge smaller than the dining area, though it's tough to distinguish between them — will show you what you missed if you were never a Latina 15-year-old. Overhead is a motley crew of party lights (strobes, lasers, neon beams) while some twinkly 3-D palm trees burn through the haze of wet… More >>

• Best Monday Night Football Party

  Mo's Place

  At Mo's Place in Playa del Rey, the slick, outsized pageantry of Monday Night Football is no match for the debauched live-action carnival gleefully concocted by the proprietor. When you walk in, you see a typical, somewhat weathered sports bar. Faded pennants, posters and blinking screens plaster every speck of the interior. A lively crowd gathers, but the real party… More >>

• Best Super Discount Mixology Happy Hour

  Thirsty Crow

  Thirsty Crow serves up ultrapremium cocktails fit for Don Draper. Stirred up by knowledgeable, well-schooled barkeeps, the drinks feature expensive ryes, special ginger beers, orange zest, fresh juices and even real maraschino cherries — the dark ones, not those bright red formaldehyde monstrosities you usually get. But the cocktails come with a steep price tag: $12, which is not the… More >>

• Best Adult Entertainment That Won't Make You Feel Dirty

  4Play

  The ladies at 4Play look like pieces of fancy cake, and the lounge's cushioned leather booths and cathedral-high ceilings suggest a fantasy belle epoque version of L.A. This place takes its high-class status seriously —it's a "gentleman's club," after all — so be sure to dress as if you do, too, and don't forget to fortify your wallet. Entrance is… More >>

• Best Industry Party

  Coffin Case Presents: Club Tarantino

  Too often industry parties involve the same boring entertainment and hors d'oeuvres, and quickly devolve into games of kiss-ass among those attempting to network. Coffin Case Presents: Club Tarantino is the exception. Held first Thursdays of the month at the beloved Three Clubs venue on Vine, it doesn't have any association with Quentin; the idea is simply that it's as… More >>

• Best Smallest Bar

  Harbor Room

  Perhaps, like us, you've loved, fought, kissed, made up and hugged the toilet at the Harbor Room on a late-night pub crawl through Playa Del Rey. They might even remember you. After all, the place is small. Like, the size of your bathroom small. But what it lacks in size it makes up for in drinks, which are strong, big… More >>

• Best Club for Those With Eclectic Tastes

  Check Yo' Ponytail 2

  The only thing you can expect when heading out to Check Yo' Ponytail 2 is that you'll never be at the same party twice. The latest incarnation of IHEARTCOMIX founder Franki Chan's party, Check Yo' Ponytail brings together the local labelhead/tastemaker with promoters Danny Johnson (Media Contender) and Zane Landreth (Killing Spree). Its monthly parties at the Echoplex take on… More >>

• Best Beautiful Bar in an Ugly Strip Mall

  Tantalum

  Lost in a corner between a Loehmann's and an Acapulco, Tantalum is an Asian jungle-oasis escape from the SUV-driving hordes at Best Buy, Ralphs and Sports Authority. As you enter with the less-than-zero expectations inspired by the front facade, you are greeted by a huge, open series of rooms with such spectacular ambience and striking water views of the marina… More >>