Comments (0) Best Hollywood Dive Bar - 2012
Frolic Room
When a friend comes to town, why not take them to where Bukowski drank? Hollywood's Frolic Room is one of the only places Bukowski obsessives agree that he actually haunted, and a portrait of him hangs above the cash register. But you don't have to be a Bukowski fan to appreciate a good dive bar and, thanks to gentrification, Hollywood boasts precious few these days. The Frolic Room has been around since Prohibition ended and continues to offer a paradoxically classy dive-bar ambience. Bartenders aren't over-tattooed out-of-work actors but suited gentlemen who will remember your favorite spirits every time you step in. The walls feature caricatures of Groucho Marx and Albert Einstein, two people who almost certainly never drank here but whose images provide a kitschy, old-school charm. So come during the day and see workaday Joes. Come at night and see Hollywood hipsters who know from good bars and the ghost of Hank Chinaski. 6245 Hollywood Blvd., Hlywd. (323) 462-5890.
—Nicholas Pell
