Alhambra
Posted: September 14, 2006 Filed under: Dive Bar Reviews 3 Comments »
Alhambra Cocktail Lounge
216 W 11th St, San Pedro, CA
(310) 548-4000
My friend Brandon Mayer performed a few weeks ago in San Pedro. A UCLA professor and friend of Brandons could not make it but he emailed him a recommendation for a place to have a drink afterwards. Brandon was intrigued by the professor’s recommendation and forwarded me the email:
“…I went pub-crawling in Pedro last week with a french cousin and a local publisher. You should check out the Alhambra for an out-of-the-body experience. Anyway, I lived to tell the tale…”
Needless to say it sparked our curiosity and amusement of picturing this certain professor out bar hopping in San Pedro.
At the coffee house where Brandon was playing the owner drew a very crude map of how to get there on a napkin and I copied it to get a head start since Brandon had to break down first.
So my friend Josh and I headed there…down 6th right on Pacific Palisades Dr., then right on 11th. Driving by all these very big, very old wood homes I was about to say “there can’t be any bar around here, this is a residential neighborhood” I saw it right there surrounded by all these houses was a tiny bar with a red sign that read “San Pedro’s oldest Bar the Alhambra since 1936.”
We parked headed in and I immediately feel like I had stepped into the Twilight Zone. Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” is playing on the juke box. The guy playing pinball and his girlfriend are thin and wirey and are chain smoking – they look like they have been up for a while. Two guys at the end of the bar looked like contract killers. One very big guy had this burly moustache waxed up at the edges and he was wearing a panama hat with a hawaiian shirt.
When Brandon walked into the bar with his guitar (Brandon always brings his guitar along for fear it might get stolen out of his car) the guy says “Hey! Hey buddy! you gonna sing us a song or what?” then Brandon breaks out his Turkish “HAHA Song” which the guy does not find amusing “haha? What’s this haha?” then Josh and I encourage Brandon to come join us at the table. At this point Josh is convinced that we are all going to die.
So we order beers and to our amazement, and I’m still trying to do the math on this one, but all three beers totaled under $5. Now I don’t care where you’re from – that cheap beer!
Once we settled in I was able to take in the ambiance of the place. Complete nautical theme with ropes and pictures of old ships, wooden wheels and fish netting. Also some really old Budweiser bikini posters from the 80’s when one piece thongs were in vogue.
At one point the music stopped and the scary moustache guy yells out to us “play song for chris sek” the juke box was fairly standard but there were some gems in there. I chose Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man” and that got the whole bar singing. Don’t remember too much after that but was happy to make it home safely and “live to tell the tale”…
Dive Bar Crawl
Posted: May 31, 2006 Filed under: Dive Bar Reviews 3 Comments »
My friend Brandon and I were talking about how all of the old dive bars in Los Angeles are fading away. I think everyone needs to make a concerted effort to check out as many dive bars as possible before they all disappear or become “hipified” (for example, when I lived in Santa Monica the Circle Bar was a low key watering hole for west siders – close enough to Venice beach to have an interesting bohemian edge. Now it’s an ironic trucker hat wearing fratboy hang out with 14 year old girls with fake ID’S)
Now one bar that Miss A and I randomly stumbled upon was the Cinema Bar. The place was tiny but it had such a warm vibe. Everyone was friendly and the band (Randy Weeks) kicked ass. Kind of a “Wilco’ish” vibe with lush California country style warm harmonies. There was also a jam band psychedelic edge to them as well.
