Mary and Margo's Halloween Sideshow of Madness

Before

Long walk · 0.5 mi · 11 min walk; 2 min ride - NoHo Arts District

A brick-walled Tex-Mex place with a big open patio on the Magnolia corner two doors off Lankershim. The menu starts with grilled street corn and Frito pie. Tacos and enchiladas follow. The bar keeps draft beer and frozen margaritas, with a mezcal list beside them. There is cornhole on the patio and the kitchen stays open until closing, which is 2am every night. It took over the building that was Bow & Truss, which shut.

After

0.1 mi · 3 min walk - North Hollywood

A bar built in 1941 in the shape of a whiskey barrel, put up by a Universal film technician named Michael Connolly and left to rot for decades before the 1933 Group restored it and reopened it in 2015. The barrel holds the bar itself, with a patio behind it and a bulldog-shaped structure out back that came off the old Bulldog Cafe. Food is burgers and a pretzel, the drinks list is long, and nobody is dressed up. It is one of the last pieces of programmatic architecture in Los Angeles still doing the job it was built for.