Editorial
Los Angeles is a city with no centre, which means the bar guide to Los Angeles is a guide to 15 separate cities that happen to share a freeway system. Each neighbourhood drinks differently, operates on different hours, and attracts a different kind of bar. The Silver Lake bar is not the same as the West Hollywood bar, which is not the same as the DTLA bar, which has almost nothing in common with the Venice Beach bar. This guide works through four of the most rewarding zones and tells you which bars in each are actually worth the drive.
The practical advice first: do not drink in a place you need to drive to and from without a plan. LA's bar scene is distributed across an area that would take 90 minutes to traverse by car on a good night. The best strategy is to commit to one neighbourhood and work it properly. We recommend DTLA for the cocktail scene, Silver Lake for the neighbourhood bars, Venice for the casual end, and the Hollywood Hills for anything you want to call a view.
Downtown Los Angeles has transformed its bar scene in the past 10 years from a collection of hotel bars and sports venue options to a genuine cocktail district with 20-odd bars worth visiting. The Arts District specifically has developed a density of quality that makes it LA's equivalent of New York's Lower East Side circa 2010.
The east side neighbourhoods of Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and Echo Park contain LA's most coherent neighbourhood bar scene. These are the bars that the working writers, musicians, and creatives who make up a significant portion of the city's population actually use. The prices are honest, the hours are late, and the vibe is anti-Hollywood in the specific way that only LA bars can be.
Los Angeles has more rooftop bars than any other US city except possibly Miami, and several of them justify the claim that LA views are among the best in the world. The hidden gems are scattered across the city in the places that have not yet become famous, which in LA means checking East Hollywood, Koreatown, and the stretches of Sunset that nobody writes about.
Los Angeles is not the second-tier bar city it was 15 years ago. The Varnish changed what was possible. The Arts District demonstrated that DTLA could be a destination. The east side neighbourhood scene proved that LA could sustain bars without an entertainment industry audience. The result is a city with a bar scene that requires effort to navigate but rewards that effort with some of the best drinking in the country.
The Los Angeles hidden gems guide covers 20 bars that did not make this list, including several in Koreatown, Boyle Heights, and the San Fernando Valley that deserve more attention than they get. For the complete overview including rooftop bars, the LA rooftop bars guide organises the best elevated venues by view, price, and access. The Los Angeles bar guide is the starting point for any serious visit.
Marcus covers the US West Coast bar scene from a base in Los Angeles, where he has been drinking professionally since 2008. He was present at The Varnish on its opening week and considers the Silver Lake neighbourhood bar scene one of America's great unrecognized bar traditions.