It gets boring staying home so I like to hit up bars on my spare time. They are mostly dive bars, the Latino, Spanish speaking bars. I can get by on limited Spanish I know. I also go to gay bar and of course your regular English speaking straight bars. Add nightclubs and bars that are part of restaurants and that’s quiet a lot of places I’ve been. My list includes about 250 in the greater LA area (including the OC).
Besides getting out of the house, I like to enter bars to go back in time – to listen to the walls. Many bars have a lot of character and history. Some are just boxes. Some are trendy. I prefer the old ones with history, many having turned Latino. I wonder what the bars were like in the past with a different clientele.
During my bar crawling years, I have lived in Pasadena, Silverlake and am currently living in Boyle Heights. So most of the bars I have been to are in those areas. But I love exploring and have been to bars in many other areas as well. It is not uncommon for me to see a bar and get off the bus (yes, I live a transit dependent lifestyle – I still have a valid drivers license, so don’t get any ideas that I take the bus because of a DUI – i just have no wheels by choice right now)
I hope to bring news about new bars I discover, as well as stories of bars that are gone, and news on changes going on in bars. In the summer i hope to do a bar crawl or two and maybe other will join me.
With so many bars in LA, I hope that others will contribute. I definitely can’t do it on my own. And I know there are other more knowledgeable than me too. So please contribute.
Well that’s it for the intro. Coming up next is my bar list and some disappointing news from 2 bars this week.
Cheers,
Robert
