This week in Los Angeles
Week of Thursday, October 8. Where there is somewhere worth going before or after, we name it, so you can read this once and have a week.
West Texas songs, dry humor and decades of shared history, at McCabe's.
Before
Gilbert's El Indio · 0.5 mi · 10 min walk; 2 min ride
Carmen and Gilberto Rodriguez bought an existing Pico Boulevard place called El Indio in May 1974 and added Gilbert's name to the sign. Both founders have since died and their nine children own it together. Tortillas are pressed in house and the bar runs on margaritas for people who live within a mile of it.
Nelson's road-tested country-rock shares a bill with Molly Tuttle, one of bluegrass's best modern guitar players.
Before
Philippe the Original · short ride recommended · 5 min
Opened in 1908 and at the Alameda Street address since 1951, when the original building was taken for the 101 freeway. Sawdust covers the floor. Long lines form at carving stations where you order by shouting your sandwich. The tables are communal. Coffee is still famously cheap.
After
Monty Bar · 0.7 mi · 15 min walk; 2 min ride
Next door to the Teragram on Seventh Street, with dark wood, a short beer list and a DJ most nights. It opens late and closes at 2am. On a weeknight it is mostly people who came out of the venue next door.
Jaclyn Backhaus takes the wives from familiar stories and lets them speak for themselves.
Before
Cafe Dulce · 0.2 mi · 3 min walk
A coffee counter in the middle of Japanese Village Plaza, open since 2010, known for a green tea donut and a bacon-wrapped one. The seating is the plaza itself. It opens at 8am and runs into the evening, which is rare for a coffee place downtown.
After
Far Bar · 0.2 mi · 5 min walk
Set in a narrow brick passage off First Street in Little Tokyo, in a building that was a chop suey house before the war. The list runs long on whiskey and Japanese beer. A patio sits in the alley itself, and food is served until close. It stays open past midnight every night of the week.
Kim Gordon and Bill Nace reduce rock music to two guitars, feedback and whatever happens next.
Before
Tacos Delta · short ride recommended · 7 min
A family has run this corner stand at Sunset and Lucile since 1981. Its own menu leads with chilaquiles, which tells you what the morning crowd is there for, and the rest is fish and shrimp tacos, wet burritos and menudo. It is a painted walk-up with seating out back.
After
Astro Family Restaurant · 0.4 mi · 8 min walk
Armet and Davis built this in 1959, the firm that drew the Norms, Denny's and Bob's Big Boy prototypes, and it shows in the cantilevered swooping roof, the zig-zag railings and the freestanding sign. It opened as Conrad's, Peter Metsos took it over in 1974 and renamed it Astro, and the City Council made it a Historic-Cultural Monument by unanimous vote in October 2024. Pink leather booths, etched glass, a full diner menu.
Laura Palmer gets her own story. The film that looked excessive in 1992 now feels central to Twin Peaks.
Before
Irv's Burgers · short ride recommended · 3 min
Opened in 1946 as Queen's Burgers on Route 66 and renamed in 1970 after Irv Genis. The Hong family bought it in 2000, lost the landmark stand to a landlord dispute in 2013, moved, closed in 2018, and reopened here in July 2022. Sonia Hong still works the counter.
After
Canter's Deli · 0.3 mi · 6 min walk
Canter's has been on Fairfax since 1948 and in this building, the former Esquire Theater, since 1953. The deli case, the bakery counter and the pastrami sandwich are the same trade the Canter family started in Boyle Heights in 1931. Attached to it is the Kibitz Room, a cocktail lounge opened in 1961 that still books live music most nights and runs until 2am. Saturdays the deli does not close at all.
Loose indie rock and soft-focus pop scaled up to the Bowl.
Before
Rosy Café · short ride recommended · 3 min
The daytime cafe at the Hollywood Roosevelt, rebranded from the Tropicana Café, open 8am to 3pm. The Tropicana Bar beside it runs 9am to 10pm. The pool it looks onto has a bottom hand-painted by David Hockney, and eating here does not require a pool pass.
After
Burgundy Room · short ride recommended · 4 min
A narrow black bar on Cahuenga that opens at 8pm and shuts at 2am, seven days. Loud rock, no food, no daylight. The speakeasy origin story attached to it is lore rather than anything documented. Cards carry a surcharge.
Blonde Redhead still sits comfortably between dream-pop, noise and elegant guitar music.
Before
China Cafe · short ride recommended · 3 min
A horseshoe counter inside Grand Central Market that has been serving the same American-Chinese menu since 1959. You sit on a stool under a neon sign and order wonton soup or chow mein. The market around it dates to 1917 and the stall has outlasted most of its neighbors.
After
Monty Bar · 0.7 mi · 15 min walk; 2 min ride
Next door to the Teragram on Seventh Street, with dark wood, a short beer list and a DJ most nights. It opens late and closes at 2am. On a weeknight it is mostly people who came out of the venue next door.
A schoolgirl takes six friends to her aunt's house. The house eats them. Obayashi makes it look like a deranged TV commercial.
Before
Melrose Trading Post · 0.2 mi · 4 min walk
Every Sunday the Fairfax High School parking lot fills with around 250 vendors selling vintage clothing, records, furniture and whatever else turned up that week. Admission is three dollars and the money funds arts programs at the school and productions at the Greenway Court Theatre next door. It takes an hour to walk properly and you can leave with nothing.
After
Canter's Deli · 0.3 mi · 6 min walk
Canter's has been on Fairfax since 1948 and in this building, the former Esquire Theater, since 1953. The deli case, the bakery counter and the pastrami sandwich are the same trade the Canter family started in Boyle Heights in 1931. Attached to it is the Kibitz Room, a cocktail lounge opened in 1961 that still books live music most nights and runs until 2am. Saturdays the deli does not close at all.
Ojos del Sol gets the anniversary treatment, with Luz Elena Mendoza's folk songs pushed through psych and Latin rhythms.
Before
Gimme Gimme Records · 0.3 mi · 5 min walk
An all-vinyl shop on Figueroa carrying new and used stock across rock, jazz, soul, hip hop, country, Latin, blues and punk. Small enough to work through in half an hour.
Cameron takes Ridley Scott's haunted-house setup and turns it into a war movie.
Before
Petersen Automotive Museum · 0.1 mi · 2 min walk
Four floors of cars on Wilshire at Fairfax, behind the red ribbon facade. Under the building is the Vault, a few hundred rare vehicles including prototypes and concepts that never went into production. It is ticketed separately from general admission and cameras are not allowed down there.
After
Tom Bergin's · 0.3 mi · 6 min walk
A horseshoe bar under a ceiling papered in paper shamrocks, each one carrying a regular's name, some of them decades old. Tom Bergin opened the business in 1936 and it ran near-continuously at this Fairfax address until 2018, then reopened under new owners in December 2019 with the interior and the shamrocks intact. It is a landmarked building and the bar runs to 1am every night.
John Carpenter traps graduate students in a church with a cylinder of ancient evil. The science does not help.
Before
Petersen Automotive Museum · 0.1 mi · 2 min walk
Four floors of cars on Wilshire at Fairfax, behind the red ribbon facade. Under the building is the Vault, a few hundred rare vehicles including prototypes and concepts that never went into production. It is ticketed separately from general admission and cameras are not allowed down there.
After
Tom Bergin's · 0.3 mi · 6 min walk
A horseshoe bar under a ceiling papered in paper shamrocks, each one carrying a regular's name, some of them decades old. Tom Bergin opened the business in 1936 and it ran near-continuously at this Fairfax address until 2018, then reopened under new owners in December 2019 with the interior and the shamrocks intact. It is a landmarked building and the bar runs to 1am every night.
Tightly written stand-up from a comic who can move from old movies to personal disaster without forcing the turn.
Before
Dan Tana's · short ride recommended · 3 min
Opened in 1964 by Dobrivoje Tanasijevic, a Serbian former soccer player who had been maitre d' at La Scala. He kept the neon sign frame from the restaurant he took over. Around twenty tables in a 1929 bungalow, red checked cloths, and dishes named after regulars. The Troubadour is next door.
After
NORMS La Cienega · 0.2 mi · 3 min walk
A 1957 Armet and Davis coffee shop with the zigzag roof still standing over the parking lot. Counter seats face the griddle and the booths run along the glass. The city made it Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1090 in 2015, which is what kept the building standing when a fast-food chain bought the land underneath it.
William Friedkin's 1973 possession film. The shock has faded; the dread has not.
Plan this one
A werewolf film about two teenage sisters who already hate the world before the biting starts. Maggie Mae Fish joins the screening.
Before
Los Angeles Central Library · 0.4 mi · 8 min walk
Bertram Goodhue's 1926 building, with sphinxes on the outside and a tiled pyramid on the roof, joined in 1993 to Norman Pfeiffer's Tom Bradley Wing and its eight-story atrium hung with oversized chandeliers. Free docent tours of the art and architecture run most days and take an hour.
After
Golden Gopher · 0.4 mi · 7 min walk
The liquor license here dates to 1905, which is why the bar can sell sealed bottles to go from a window on Eighth Street. Inside there are gopher lamps, a back patio and a jukebox. It opens at 3pm every day of the year and runs to 2am.
Chicago psych-rock, cumbia and jazz played with enough looseness to keep the edges visible.
Before
Miceli's · short ride recommended · 6 min
Carmen Miceli and his wife Sylvia opened this in 1949 and it is the oldest Italian restaurant in Hollywood. The waiters sing opera and show tunes between courses, which has been the arrangement since the start rather than a later idea. Pizza and the baked pastas are what to order, under a ceiling hung with chianti bottles customers left behind.
After
Frolic Room · short ride recommended · 4 min
A narrow bar wedged against the side of the Pantages, with an Al Hirschfeld caricature mural running the length of one wall and a jukebox where a sound system would be. There is no kitchen and no cocktail list. The neon sign outside is the one on the postcards and the prices underneath it are dive prices.
Bernard Rose turns a Chicago housing project, an urban legend and Tony Todd's voice into one of the '90s' best horror films.
Before
Armon's Restaurant and Coffee Shop · 0.3 mi · 7 min walk
A diner on Eagle Rock Boulevard since 1962, with brown vinyl stools down a long counter and booths along the walls. The kitchen does corned beef hash, French toast and a cheeseburger club, and then it does Thai-American dishes on the same menu, including Thai-style fried rice with bacon and chicken sausage with rice and eggs. House chile salsa arrives in a jar.
After
Verdugo Bar · short ride recommended · 7 min
A beer bar on Verdugo Road with twenty-two taps, more than fifty bottles and a large back patio that takes most of the crowd. Open to 2am every night and from noon on weekends.
Short, sharp indie rock with hooks that never needed much decoration.
Before
Tacos Villa Corona · short ride recommended · 3 min
A walk-up counter on Glendale Boulevard that opens at 6am and sells until the food runs out, usually by mid-afternoon. Cash only. The chorizo and potato breakfast burrito is what Anthony Bourdain ate here for The Layover, and a second counter opened on Eagle Rock Boulevard in 2025.
After
Astro Family Restaurant · 0.4 mi · 8 min walk
Armet and Davis built this in 1959, the firm that drew the Norms, Denny's and Bob's Big Boy prototypes, and it shows in the cantilevered swooping roof, the zig-zag railings and the freestanding sign. It opened as Conrad's, Peter Metsos took it over in 1974 and renamed it Astro, and the City Council made it a Historic-Cultural Monument by unanimous vote in October 2024. Pink leather booths, etched glass, a full diner menu.
A foundational Brooklyn MC on a Hollywood stage far smaller than his standing.
Before
Hollywood Farmers' Market · 0.2 mi · 4 min walk
Ivar and Selma close to traffic every Sunday morning for a certified growers market started in 1991 by the city council office as a weekly event for residents. Around 160 California farmers and food producers set up, and buskers work the corners. It is run by Food Access Los Angeles, formerly SEE-LA.
After
Frolic Room · 0.4 mi · 9 min walk
A narrow bar wedged against the side of the Pantages, with an Al Hirschfeld caricature mural running the length of one wall and a jukebox where a sound system would be. There is no kitchen and no cocktail list. The neon sign outside is the one on the postcards and the prices underneath it are dive prices.
Alejandro Rose-Garcia built the name on one-man-band folk before growing it into a full, crooked roots-rock show.
Before
Philippe the Original · short ride recommended · 5 min
Opened in 1908 and at the Alameda Street address since 1951, when the original building was taken for the 101 freeway. Sawdust covers the floor. Long lines form at carving stations where you order by shouting your sandwich. The tables are communal. Coffee is still famously cheap.
After
Monty Bar · 0.7 mi · 15 min walk; 2 min ride
Next door to the Teragram on Seventh Street, with dark wood, a short beer list and a DJ most nights. It opens late and closes at 2am. On a weeknight it is mostly people who came out of the venue next door.
Warm, unfussy guitar music with a clear line back to '70s studio pop.
Before
Neutra VDL Studio and Residences · short ride recommended · 6 min
Richard Neutra's own house, built in 1932 as the VDL Research House on the east bank of the Silver Lake Reservoir, with a Garden House added at the end of the decade. A fire in 1963 left only the Garden House and the original basement, and Neutra rebuilt the main residence with his son and partner Dion, adding floors and a penthouse solarium on top. Cal Poly Pomona's College of Environmental Design holds it now and opens it to the public on Saturdays.
After
Verdugo Bar · short ride recommended · 4 min
A beer bar on Verdugo Road with twenty-two taps, more than fifty bottles and a large back patio that takes most of the crowd. Open to 2am every night and from noon on weekends.
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