Mark Stefanos
The Short Stop was bustling last Saturday night around 10:30, which was early enough to beat the line. Inside was a mix of the type of people you’ll regularly find there, and by that, I mean every kind: girls in slip dresses, girls in hoodies, USC kids looking for an upgrade from their 901 Bar bubble, Latino dudes who grew up in the neighborhood, a newlywed couple and their party on their wedding night.
The DJs were playing a Top 40 mix that was heavy on hip-hop crowd pleasers. As it neared midnight, the dance floor was as dense as it gets, with some space to squeeze in if you went around to the side entrance by the bathrooms.
Dylan Petit-Jaques surveys the line (Mark Stefanos)
I caught Dylan Petit-Jaques surveying the line outside around 12:30. Tip: as long as the queue isn’t reaching the gas station, you’ll probably get in within 20 minutes. The dance floor will stay packed til the lights come on, so it’s worth the wait even if you come late.
“I started going to Short Stop right after the world opened up in 2022-2023 and have been going frequently since then,” Dylan would later tell me. Frequently? I’ve seen him there dozens of times. The Miami-native has been in LA for nine years, and the reason he returns to Short Stop is simple: “It’s one of the few places in LA where you can drink, dance and meet great people.”
As a fellow barfly, I’ve been trying to figure out the alchemy that has made The Short Stop LA’s best dance bar for my entire adult life, one that keeps patrons coming back time and again.
It’s LA’s official unofficial Dodger bar, and game days are packed with fans in jerseys catching their Boys in Blue within its memorabilia-adorned walls. They hobble to the floor after to celebrate or dance off a loss, where they can meet a Soul Train alum reliving the magic of Motown, young singles showing off their moves, or an elderly Asian lady clad in New Year’s Eve party wearables and noise makers, all cutting a rug together.
A beloved Short Stop regular (Courtesy of Cassandra Simon)
It helps that it’s located in the heart of LA on Sunset in Echo Park, drawing folks from all zip codes, but just outside the tenuous temps of downtown. You can’t name a place that can rival its cross-section and concentration of LA, which is part of the reason why so much of LA has filtered through its bullet-hole-dinged front door.
Another is topography — it has a wide bar to crowd in front with a solid selection of reasonably priced drinks, the pool room where you can catch a breather or stack friends for your birthday, the long, narrow smoking patio that forces you to meet randoms, the photo booth where you squeeze in with them to commemorate the new friendship.
And, of course, the perfectly sized dance floor, small enough to force you to collide into that cutie you keep making eye flirts with, big enough to hide from them if they end up being weird. The DJ booth is perched high above, which promotes the rule of a good dance floor: people don’t face the DJ, they face each other. And on the floor, people really dance, and a lot of people dance well. The sound is great, the disco ball and lights are great, and the music programming is excellent.
This month, The Short Stop is celebrating 25 years under its current ownership, but its history goes back much further.
The Short Stop opened in 1966 in a grittier Echo Park, on a block of three storefronts that were once grocery, confectionery and taxidermy. The buildings have a long, sordid history that includes stabbings, car crashes and fur heists, much of which is documented in this short by Rory Mitchell:
Previous owner Mike Balmer bought the place in 1974, an attorney who also ran a bail bonds business out of it. Cops became the bar’s core clientele starting in the mid-70s.
“That’s where I met my wife!” Ron Aguilar, a retired LAPD officer, tells me. He was a regular for years, so much so that his photo was up on the wall in the pool room, standing shirtless with pals and roommates in front of Monster Manor, a storied nearby house where LAPD deputies, Dodger players and various bar patrons lived together.
Short Stop Bail Bonds mug (Courtesy of Cassandra Simon)
He recalls the era that now sounds like the wild west. “This guy tried to rob the place not knowing it was a cop bar. It was his first and last hold-up,” he laughs. Ron and his buds still treasure those times — “we were young and dumb and it was just great.” Their crew still gets together every few months for breakfast with Balmer.
While the bonds formed among patrons there may have lasted, The Short Stop’s era as a cop bar did not. It all went to hell with the infamous Rampart Scandal of the late-90s, the largest documented police corruption case in Los Angeles history that exposed brutality, evidence planting, drug dealing, bank robbery, perjury, and cover-ups by dozens of officers in the notorious Rampart CRASH unit.
Rafael Perez, the disgraced officer at the center of the scandal, went on the record saying that Short Stop is where he yapped about his crimes. After that, cops stayed away to avoid being watched or overheard by internal affairs investigators, and with business gone, Balmer set a closing date of Dec. 31, 2000.
That’s when six friends stepped in and decided to buy the place just in the nick of time, opening on Dec. 26. Four of them remain the owners to this day: Greg Dulli, Charles Gaiennie, Dave Neupert and Oliver Wilson.
“Right before the Rampart scandal, Charles and I lived in Echo Park, and we’d go there to shoot pool, like, six o’clock, happy hour time,” Greg Dulli, a musician and frontman of the Afghan Whigs, remembers.
The group of friends came from music industry circles, not bar ownership. They bought the Short Stop because they wanted a local spot in their neighborhood that felt right for them and their friends, but that feeling didn’t come with a business plan. “We had no idea what we were doing,” admits Dulli, “We’ve somehow managed to take it to 25 years, and it’s been a great time.”
That stretch of Sunset looked very different back then, especially at night. “Echo Park was still kind of rough around the edges,” says Dave Neupert. “And obviously not much going on over there yet.” There was no master plan to launch a nightlife revolution. They were creating the kind of bar they craved, one that was welcoming, unpretentious, and rooted in the community they were making their home.
The dance floor (Mark Stefanos)
The makeup of the building was a lot different when the new owners took over. There wasn’t dancing, for starters — that room had a drop ceiling and industrial carpeting and there sat a gaggle of foosball tables.
“Collectively, we were like, this would be an amazing dance floor,” Dulli recalls. So the new team tore it all out and put in a parquet floor and DJ booth. In an era when dancing meant heading west to clubs with covers and attitudes, this was a bit of a novelty — a chill bar where you could dance for free to top selectors. It immediately put them on the map.
“Everybody loves to dance. We would just get the best DJs we knew, or occasionally, Charles and I would spin too,” says Dulli. “Word got out, and then we started having lines down the street.”
The buzz built fast. By August 2001, Rolling Stone Magazine listed Short Stop as the nation’s “Hot Bar” in their annual Hot List. Here’s how Chris Mundy wrote it then:
“This Echo Park watering hole that’s nearly impossible to find has become the sceniest bar in L.A. Among its six owners are one-time Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli and graphic artist Kevin Reagan, who has won two Grammys for album-cover design. ‘We figured only the brave would head here,’ says Reagan. ‘But people are coming from everywhere’”
Soon, bars across LA were following suit. “We weren’t the founders, but we were the catalyst,” Charles Gaiennie says.
But the auspicious start went sideways one night in late 2001. Like a scene out of Footloose, the police busted in and shut down the dance floor because they didn’t have a dance permit.
“They were very emphatic, let’s just say, with their presence,” says Dulli of the way they were shut down. His passive response was to put up a piece of folk art with “Dancing Iz Evil” scrawled on it. That message is now commemorated in a neon sign above the north exit of the dance floor.
Dancing iz evil (Mark Stefanos)
“We were clueless. You need a dance permit?” Neupert admits. “From then on, we were just like, ‘Well, it looks like we’ll have to be a lot more aware of the permitting issue.’ It became something of a running joke for a while,” Gaienne adds.
The room turned into a lounge while they waited, which took a couple of years. “It was kind of on the edge there for a minute.”
When the permit finally came through in 2002, the reopening felt triumphant. “We had a giant party,” Gaiennie says. What could have broken them now adds to the bar’s six-decade lore.
The Short Stop’s success comes from its leaders cultivating a place that feels like a “third home.”
“The secret sauce is really, we all come from outside of LA,” says Neupert. “I grew up in Chicago, Greg grew up in Cincinnati. Charles is from Louisiana with a lot of New Orleans experience. Chicago’s a very neighborhood bar-driven place. That’s where I found comfort before I moved out here when I was a young man.”
Like retired officer Ron Aguilar (and my own gaggle of friends), Short Stop is where lifetime relationships are sparked. “There’s just so many stories from patrons throughout the years — people fell in love there, ended up having babies, people got divorced there,” Neupert says.
The key to that is the lack of exclusivity. “It’s the neighborhood bar vibe,” Neupert says. “It’s come one, come all.”
The dance floor on any given night looks like a Benetton ad. “I think we’ve done a really good job of blending the local Latino culture with the local artsy culture. Old and young, I think that’s important too. There’s no ageism.”
The owners also put an emphasis on the Dodger bar element, which wasn’t huge in previous eras. “The Dodgers were my sworn enemy, so it was very strange to become a fan of theirs,” says Dulli. “Dodgers would come down early on and drink at the bar. I drank with Andre Ethier, James Loney, who would stop and hang out, even stick around and dance.”
Gun lockers at The Short Stop (Photo: Ben Cosgrove)
Preservation plays a key role too. When they took over around 2000, the new owners embraced the past, keeping the remnants that gave the place its character — the gun lockers, the nightstick rails on the stairs to the pool room, faded photographs from another era. It was a conscious choice to absorb the history rather than erase it, turning what could have been baggage into part of the bar’s soul. “LA tends to whitewash a lot of history and it’s a shame,” Neupert notes.
The mix of dance floor, neighborhood joint and cultural incubator has proved durable.
The owners have followed this rubric at a number of other spots. Dulli, Neupert and Wilson also own Footsies in Cypress Park, and Dulli and Neupert own Club Tee Gee in Atwater along with Pete Lenavitt. Neupert is also owner of La Cita, Melody Lounge and the Gold Diggers bar and campus. (A mix of them also own two bars in New Orleans.) Altogether, these cover a lot of the top dance bars in LA.
Ultimately, the focus is on the customer. “Obviously, you can’t have a bar without patrons. They’re the ones we count on,” says Gaiennie. “The bartenders can’t forget that, it is those people on the other side of the bar that make us money, that keep us in business and their experience is the most important thing.”
For Short Stop fan Petit-Jaques, they knock that out the park, and it’s why he keeps coming back. “The staff is incredible and professional,” he says. “They treat their patrons with respect and the customer service is amazing.”
Today, much of the day-to-day magic falls to Cassandra Simon. The Highland Park native started as a bartender at Footsies in 2015 and worked her way up to being the general manager of both Footsies and Short Stop.
Cassandra Simon in her indie sleaze era (Courtesy of Cassandra Simon)
“Cassandra Simon is the queen of The Short Stop,” Dulli says. “She’s the boots on the ground person there and has a great hold of the history.”
Simon points to subtle details that make Short Stop cozy. “The whole middle room is lined with cork on the ceiling. So there’s a warmth to it. The sound absorbs differently.”
“There’s a home feeling. There are clubs, but there’s nothing like that room at the Short Stop where you feel like you’re out, but you kind of feel like you’re at a house party,” she says. “We don’t have a high turnover with staff like at other bars so that adds to the experience when it’s the same bartender you know.”
She now programs The Short Stop alongside Kirill Federovich. Simon fosters an ecosystem where new talent thrives in the house party vibe. Her approach is simple and flexible — “If someone has an idea for a night, we’ll just try it,” she says.
That current but unpretentious balance keeps people coming back.
To commemorate 25 years of this era, this month The Short Stop is holding a showcase — more like a trophy case — of the parties held there since 2000.
A testament to insightful programming and the bar’s general appeal is how many DJs and parties were incubated there then left.
“A lot of people have started their DJ careers at The Short Stop, then have moved on to way bigger venues. It’s awesome to foster that,” says Simon.
The preeminent Wednesday night reggae party Dub Club started at Spaceland in 2000, then moved to Short Stop where it blossomed, eventually moving to the larger Echo/Echoplex. They had their Short Stop reunion on Dec. 3.
DJ Lance Rock of Yo Gabba Gabba returned to the decks on Dec. 7, followed that night by the beloved Super Soul Sunday with DJs Jennifer Tefft and Jake Goldstein, which started in 2008 and called it quits a few years ago.
Last Thursday, Dec. 11, the indie-pop Electric Feels, hosted by Jeremy Burke of Loud Village, returned to the place that started it all. One of our favorite parties of 2023, Electric Feels has become massive, playing festivals and touring major venues in over 50 cities.
“I was doing various parties at The Short Stop for years before I started Electric Feels,” Jeremy Burke tells me. “They were one of the first bars to give me my own night.”
He calls the Short Stop “a perfect bar” and “lifeblood of Echo Park,” adding, “As a DJ, The Short Stop is a great place to get a feel for what the crowd is into. The booth is close enough that you hear everyone, and it’s elevated enough that you see everyone, too. Plus, you can have 20 or 200 people in there and it feels great, so it’s a great place to try out stuff.”
Haycoxxx and Thee Mike B, LA DJ legends for over two decades that you know and love, were residents at Short Stop between 2009 and 2013 with their multi-genre Cheap Pop! party that brought special guests like The Rapture, Diplo and J-Rocc.
“I met Mike B at a wedding in Big Sur, probably 15 years ago,” Dulli remembers of his first encounter with the mixmaster that we profiled last month. “He DJed the reception. I was like, ‘Dude, can I get your number?’ So I got Mike and Chris [Haycock] to start spinning on Saturday nights and it was instantly an electric night, really popular.”
The duo are teaming back up for 100% Baddies tonight, Dec. 13, and next Saturday, Dec. 20.
On Monday, Dec. 15, the venerated Motown on Monday is celebrating its 14-year anniversary. Founded in San Francisco in 2004, they launched in LA in 2011 and decided on The Short Stop because of the “reputation the spot already had in town for being a good room to dance, and being fairly popular across quite a few kinds of crowds,” says LA founder DJ Expo.
Motown on Mondays (Mark Stefanos)
DJ Phatrick adds, “14 years is a long time to organize and promote a free weekly Monday night party and it doesn’t happen without a healthy relationship with the venue and its staff. Shout out to the owners and Cass, the general manager, who have been our champions through thick and thin.” 14 years is indeed long, and the fact that Motown on Monday routinely still pops off on a school night is an epic story in and of itself.
Co-owners Greg Dulli and Charles Gaiennie will bring back their DJ headphones and reunite with Warner Brothers A&R exec David “Prime Time” Katznelson, for Evening Becomes Dyslexic on Dec. 18. Running from 2002-2005, the eclectic mix of funk, soul and hip-hop will be revived for one night only in their old Thursday night slot.
This all culminates with the official anniversary on Dec. 26. The night will kick off with the illustrious DJ Linda Nuves of Chulita Vinyl Club from 6 to 10 p.m., a long time Short Stop staple, followed by current Friday resident, the prolific DJ Seano, who will continue the celebration with rap and R&B throwbacks by bringing back Do It, which he started with DJ Expo in 2013.
The hallowed walls of the Short’s Stop dance floor have soaked in the sounds from an amalgam of LA’s best DJs, an esteemed legacy of intertwined community.
“You’d be surprised that even some of the younger generation that’s coming up now is weirdly a part of those groups,” says Simon. “I always call LA ‘the Olympic Rings.’ There’s all the rings, but then somehow we’re all connected.”
The anniversary month continues through New Year’s Eve, and there are many more epic throwback nights on the slate, so follow The Short Stop on Instagram for the full list, then congregate on the floor to feel the rhythms of 25 years of the best of LA nightlife.
The Short Stop has survived competition, expansion, and shifts in nightlife culture. Running a bar for 25 years means constant care. “The times change, technology changes, trends change,” says Simon.
Short Stop staff throughout the years (Courtesy of Cassandra Simon)
Neupert agrees. “You can’t get stale,” he says. “You’ve got to keep it fresh for new generations while still kind of honoring the vibe that we had already created. It takes work.”
I ask the team what it means to have run the spot all these years.
“I think what I’m most proud of is that we still continue to be a place for people to meet up, hang out with their friends or meet new people,” says Gaiennie. “That’s what bars were designed for, and I still think that that’s what that bar does. And, better than a lot of bars.”
Says Dulli, “Did we give you some place to go have a good time where you felt safe and you had fun, and you danced your ass off and maybe met your soulmate? — that’s the contribution.”
“I don’t know how many years it takes to become an institution, but I think we’re officially there,” says Neupert. “We’re going to run that place until we’re very old. We’ve all made that commitment. We were able to buy the real estate some years ago, and that gives us the ability to hang on to it forever, which feels great.”
“When it gets stressful or whatever, I’m like, this is what it’s all about,” says Simon. “The service industry is hard, but someone just had a blast at the place that you work. I think that’s the worthwhile part of doing all this.
“My goal is that when they turn the lights on that you still want to be all sweaty and dancing. That’s the best feeling in the world.”
The Short Stop on the Dec. 12, 2025 cover of LA Weekly (Photo and design: Mark Stefanos)