The Smog Cutter, Silver Lake.

Silver Lake's enduring karaoke dive.

The Smog Cutter opened in 1989 in a former auto repair shop on Virgil Avenue, two blocks east of where Silver Lake meets East Hollywood. The owner, Vy Nguyen, was a Vietnamese refugee who had bartended at three different LA dives in the 1980s before opening her own. She built the bar with a single concept: karaoke every night. The Smog Cutter has been the most reliable karaoke bar in Los Angeles for thirty-six years.

The room is small: thirty-five seats, a single karaoke setup at the back wall, a small dance floor that serves as a queue area, twelve stools at the bar, and four red vinyl booths along the left wall. Vy has not changed any decor since 1992, when she added a string of fairy lights along the back wall behind the karaoke setup. The fairy lights are the room's primary stage lighting.

Why this matters. The Smog Cutter is the rare LA bar that has held a single nightly ritual for thirty-six years without interruption. The karaoke book has not been replaced since 2010, although Vy has added new songs on a separate slip system since 2018. The bar's identity is the karaoke and the karaoke is the bar.

Vy sings Wednesday night.

Every Wednesday at 10pm, Vy Nguyen takes the karaoke microphone and sings two songs back to back. She has been doing this every Wednesday since 1989, with the exception of three weeks following her gallbladder surgery in 2014. Her two songs change occasionally but the canonical pair is "Crazy" by Patsy Cline and "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra.

The room stops for Vy. The bar staff stop pouring during her songs. The karaoke queue freezes. The regulars at the bar turn to face the back wall. This is the bar's weekly secular ritual. When Vy finishes her second song, the bartenders pour her a small glass of Hennessy, the regulars applaud, and the karaoke queue resumes.

If you are a tourist visiting on a Wednesday, do not sign up for the slot directly before Vy. The room has an unwritten rule that the 9:45pm slot stays empty so Vy can take the stage at 10pm without interruption.

A Tecate, a tequila shot, and the Smog Cutter cocktail.

• Tecate: four dollars a can. The bar's standard. Comes with a slice of lime jammed into the top, the LA dive default.
• Tequila shot: five dollars. Hornitos or Sauza, served with a lime wedge and a small dish of salt.
• The Smog Cutter: nine dollars. The bar's namesake cocktail, invented by Vy in 1990: vodka, lemon, orange juice, lime, served on the rocks. Slightly bitter, slightly sweet, designed to clear an LA smog headache.
• Vodka soda: six dollars. The 1990s LA standard the bar still pours.
• The thing nobody knows: Vy keeps a small bottle of pho-style fish sauce behind the bar and will offer a Bloody Mary with the fish sauce as the secret ingredient. Order "Vy's Bloody." It is the most unusual hangover cure in Los Angeles.

Wednesday at 9:30pm. The Vy night.

The Smog Cutter opens at 6pm and closes at 2am. The bar is closed Mondays. Wednesday at 9:30pm is the canonical visit: arrive thirty minutes before Vy sings, claim a stool at the bar, order a Tecate and a tequila shot, watch the karaoke queue fill in, listen for Vy at 10pm.

The Friday and Saturday nights are loud and packed. The karaoke book gets full quickly and the wait can be ninety minutes. The honest non-Vy hour is Tuesday at 7pm: the bar is half empty, the karaoke is being warmed up by two early regulars, the bartenders pour slowly.

Sunday is a service-industry night. LA bartenders, cooks, and waitstaff filter in after their shifts elsewhere. The karaoke is loose and the songs are dramatic.

What you sing, and how to choose.

The Smog Cutter karaoke book is two large three-ring binders with the original 1990s laminated song slips. The book has approximately 12,000 songs organised alphabetically by artist. Vy has added a second binder of newer songs (post-2010) on slip-paper additions, alphabetised separately. The original book has not been changed in song count since 2010.

The bar has unwritten karaoke etiquette. Songs over five minutes are discouraged. Songs that require a duet are encouraged but you must bring a partner. Songs by Frank Sinatra, Patsy Cline, and Nancy Sinatra are reserved for Vy on Wednesday and should be avoided on that night. The most popular song in the book is "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler, sung an estimated 2,400 times since 1989.

Twenty-five dollars per person, four drinks.

Plan for twenty to thirty-five dollars per person for a three-hour visit. Three Tecates at four, two tequila shots at five, twenty percent tip. A pair of friends drinks for forty-five to sixty dollars total. The Smog Cutter is one of the cheapest serious dives in Silver Lake.

Cards are accepted. Cash is preferred for tequila shots. The bartender pool includes the karaoke host and the door staff. Two dollars per drink in cash on the bar is the local norm. Tipping the karaoke host five dollars in cash before you sign up gets your slot moved up by approximately one place in the queue.

The Silver Lake working-musician crowd.

The Smog Cutter draws three populations. The first is a small group of long-tenure Silver Lake residents in their forties and fifties who have come for karaoke since the 1990s. The second is the LA working-musician crowd: session players, audio engineers, indie rock band members between tours, who come because the bar is cheap and the karaoke is honest. The third is the LA service-industry crowd: bartenders, restaurant staff, dispatchers, and a small contingent of LA cab drivers (now mostly Lyft and Uber) on graveyard shifts.

You will find some Silver Lake creative-industry crowd, particularly Wednesday for Vy. The Smog Cutter remains stubbornly priced for the working-musician demographic. Vy has refused multiple offers to convert the bar to a craft cocktail program.

How not to be the worst person at the Smog Cutter.

• Do not sign up for the 9:45pm Wednesday slot. The room holds the slot empty for Vy. The host will skip your name.
• Do not sing a Frank Sinatra, Patsy Cline, or Nancy Sinatra song on Wednesday. Those are Vy's. Choose elsewhere on the menu.
• Do not photograph Vy without her consent. She does not pose. She sings, and you watch.
• Do not bring a stag party with matching shirts on a Friday. The karaoke queue will exclude you politely.
• Do not sing "Bohemian Rhapsody." The song is on the unofficial banned list. Vy banned it in 2002 after a regular sang it three weekends in a row.
• Do not request to skip ahead in the queue without tipping the host. The five-dollar tip is the protocol.
• Do not, ever, refer to the bar as "Smog Cutter" without "the." It is The Smog Cutter. Always with the article.

Yuca's, Smog Cutter, Tiki Ti.

The classic Silver Lake/East Hollywood karaoke evening: tacos at Yuca's on Hollywood Boulevard at 7pm, the small Cuban food shack in a parking lot. Walk five blocks south to The Smog Cutter at 8:30pm for two Tecates and a tequila shot, sign up for karaoke at 9pm. End at Tiki Ti on Sunset Boulevard at midnight for a Ray's Mistake and the longest tiki bar tradition in LA.

For more bars in the area, see our Los Angeles city guide, the live music bars guide, and the Silver Lake hidden gems.

Yes. The most consistent karaoke dive in America.