The Oyster House Saloon
12446 Moorpark St.
Studio City, CA 91604
map

Proudly proclaiming itself as the "Best Seafood in L.A." without citation, and most frequently listed under "Seafood" rather than "Bar", the Oyster House Saloon is, secretly, a top-tier dive bar that also happens to offer a 1/2 dozen oysters for $5. An inquiry with the bartender, who then shouted the inquiry to the chef (the kitchen is crammed into the far end of the bar), determined that these oysters arrive frozen and pre-shucked, ensuring the highest quality and none of the health risks associated with fresh oysters. A Sam Adams seasonal was also $5, so we stuck with that.

With the exception of the tiny kitchen, a couple friendly waitresses buzzing about, and a few tables of old-timers slurping down giant bowls of linguini and clams for $17.95 (for Dive-priced eats look elsewhere, or choose carefully from the extensive menu, and bear in mind that a complimentary shot of peach vodka is included with your bill), everything about the Oyster House is classic dive bar. Drinks are exceptionally stiff and reasonably priced, and served at either the long inside bar, or the outdoor "beach" bar patio. Both areas get rowdy and wild as the night progresses, but the rowdiness is made endearing by the bar’s median age of 67.

As usual, the casual debauchery starts around 9PM and gets really interesting by 10:00, but in this case things will also get really interesting around 8PM for any brave souls who show up early for the seafood dinner. Come for one drink, or stay for one too many. Bring anyone and everyone, and join us for a great time in the middle of the week. If you arrive early or late, look for the people having a damn good time (it’ll be us), or start having a damn good time on your own (we’ll find you).

Carpe Drink’em!

Foxfire Room
12516 Magnolia Blvd.
Valley Village, CA 91607 (The Valley, aka: No Man’s Land)
map

Like any good dive, an introduction to the Foxfire Room must be prefaced with some warnings. First off, we should note that when arriving on Magnolia, you will find the front door boarded up and barricaded like The Winchester preparing for a zombie horde. Fear not.

The entrance, and ample parking, can be achieved through the back alleyway. Second, while the bar showcases many television screens inside, it is highly unlikely …that you will be able to watch your favorite sporting event of the evening on any of them, as most are dedicated to showcasing the various security cameras protecting the perimeter.

Reading these disclaimers, one may begin to fear for ones safety, but fear not, we of the World Dive Bar Tour Executive Committee implore you. The Foxfire Room is safely located in what is known colloquially as "The Valley" — a region featuring tree-lined streets, relatively low crime (in parts, anyway), and temperatures, on average, 40 degrees hotter than the portions of Los Angeles that we call "Los Angeles."

Our suspicion is that the heightened security is simply for the purpose of protecting the bar from the encroaching Hipster Menace overflowing from Silver Lake into Studio City, and the Douchebag Menace overflowing from Santa Monica into Sherman Oaks. This is a bar for Dive Bar purists, and must be respected as such. Thus, we implore all Dive Bar Devotes to dress appropriately. No Fedoras. No ironic t-shirts. And, for that matter, no t-shirts with a retail value of over $20. Additionally, no drink orders that go by a name of anything other than the exact liquids to be porn (to the best of our knowledge, that is the proper conjugation of the verb "pour" in this sentence…at least in "The Valley"). Please, take heed of these rules. If you respect the Foxfire Room, it will respect you…otherwise, things may get ugly.

As usual, the casual debauchery starts around 9PM and gets really interesting by 10:00. Come for one drink, or stay for one too many. Bring anyone and everyone, and join us for a great time in the middle of the week. If you arrive early or late, look for the people having a damn good time (it’ll be us), or start having a damn good time on your own (we’ll find you).

Carpe Drink’em!

Alex, host

for The World Dive Bar Tour Executive Committee

]]> http://www.worlddivebartour.com/v1/2011/04/26/april-27th-2011-foxfire-room/feed/ http://www.worlddivebartour.com/v1/2010/12/07/december-8th-2010-starlite-room/ http://www.worlddivebartour.com/v1/2010/12/07/december-8th-2010-starlite-room/#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2010 07:35:30 +0000 World Dive Bar Tour http://www.worlddivebartour.com/v1/2010/12/08/december-8th-2010/ WEDNESDAY, December 8th, 2010 

Starlite Room
11411 Moorpark St.
Studio City, CA 91602
map

In the gateway to the Northern Territories sits one of LA’s truest old school dives, a place that’s looks as if it’s been serving up drinks under the same signage and to the same loyal customers since the days when it was surrounded by orange groves (probably the 1950s or so).  The Starlite Room is a place so welcoming that on the tour’s last visit, attendees were treated to supermarket bargain bin cake upon finding themselves in the midst of a regular’s somewhat depressing birthday party.

A quick scan of Starlite’s online reviews brings out exactly what any true dive bar devotee pines for — a bevy of one star ratings complaining of a jukebox with "like 2 modern CDs … Everything else was Patsy Cline, George Strait and Dean Martin", and a clientele of "weird people who look like characters that you wouldn’t want to encounter if your car broke down while driving by a small town."  Add in the cheap drinks and friendly service, and it’s clearly our kind of place.

As usual, the casual debauchery starts around 9PM and gets really interesting by 10:00. Come for one drink, or stay for one too many. Bring anyone and everyone, and join us for a great time in the middle of the week. If you arrive early or late, look for the people having a damn good time (it’ll be us), or start having a damn good time on your own (we’ll find you).

Carpe Drink’em!

Alex, Damien, & Travis - WDBT Co-czars

Dave’s on Broadway
708 E. Broadway
Glendale, CA 91205
map

It is not very often that the World Dive Bar Tour makes its way somewhere without a Los Angeles address, but this week will bring us all to the fine city of Glendale. Once you step away from the rampant consumerism of Brand Blvd. one will find the small town charm in the city’s quality collection of dive bars. Located at the intersection of Broadway and Glendale Ave, Dave’s is easy to miss. Keep an eye open for the red lit sign and the neon in the window, which simply hints at the quality within.

Dave’s on Broadway is a dive bar of the most typical sort. It is fit into a basic storefront configuration 40-ish feet wide by 100-ish feet deep, with a dark doorway in the front, a long bar along one side of the room, a pool table to the side, and a not so secret back entrance. The mixed drinks will set you back just a few bucks, the domestic oat sodas even less, and the bartender might just be wearing a classy old school white dress shirt and a thin black tie - just the way it should be. There might be free pizza, there might be karaoke or some sort of live musical performance of dubious quality, and there most certainly will be friendly senior citizens ready to make conversation with the slightest perception of eye contact.

As usual, the casual debauchery starts around 9PM and gets really interesting by 10:00. Come for one drink, or stay for one too many. Bring anyone and everyone, and join us for a great time in the middle of the week. If you arrive early or late, look for the people having a damn good time (it’ll be us), or start having a damn good time on your own (we’ll find you, if the friendly regulars don’t find you first).

Carpe Drink’em,

Alex, Damien, & Travis - WDBT Co-czars

"In the early 1880s town names such as Etheldean, Minneapolis, Portosuelo, Riverdale, San Rafael, and Verdugo were proposed. Following Thanksgiving dinner in 1883, settlers met at the schoolhouse (which also served as the community church) on lower Verdugo Road to discuss the possible names for the town. Ultimately, a young woman painter from Chicago offered the two word name "Glen Dale" and it was approved."

–Glendale Historical Society

Maeve’s Residuals
11042 Ventura Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 91604
map

A great Los Angeles dive has that special ability to hide in plain sight, in that anonymous strip mall that you drove by a thousand times and never gave a second glance. Stand on a corner and boldly declare your presence to the world at large, and your divy intentions will soon be overrun by douchebags (The Gaslight, we’re looking at you…), which is why, at least in this regard, the nearly impossible to find Residuals is tops in the city. Without a GPS system or a trusty Valley sherpa, Residuals is impossible to detect while driving this busy stretch of Ventura Blvd., its location buried far from the curb, between a torta shop and a vegan fast food joint (this is still LA, after all).

The most noticeable landmark when giving directions to Residuals is its adjacency to its more popular neighbor, the pseudo-dive and British Pub, The Fox and Hounds — enough so that in front of Maeve’s Residuals sits a sign declaring "NO PARKING FOR FOX & HOUNDS!" Were this merely battle of adjacency, this rivalry would be nothing more than a footnote, but it must be mentioned that Residuals proudly serves Guinness on tap (for $5) in the proper manner of letting your pint settle first under a neon shamrock. They broadcast every Red Sox game, too. And, one gets the sense that the grizzled old man mumbling to himself in a booth is an escaped IRA bomb-maker plotting for the inevitable escalation to violance against this bar’s fish and chip serving Protestant neighbor.

Much like the nation of Ireland’s recent emergence from the middle-ages, Residuals is struggling to find its place in the modern world. The bar is spotlessly clean, they offer free WiFi, some sort of Internet-based trivia contraption, and are down with all the latest social networking trends. And yet, it remains mostly empty, since looked at from afar, it appears to be a backwards island of savages adjacent to the enlightened Brits next door. But we on the tour… we remember the Easter of 1916.

As usual, the casual debauchery starts around 9pm and gets really interesting by 10:00. Come for one drink, or stay for one too many, bring anyone and everyone, and join us for a great time in the middle of the week. If you arrive early or late, look for the people having a damn good time (it’ll be us), or start having a damn good time on your own (we’ll find you).

Carpe Drinkem,

Alex, Damien & Travis, WDBT Co-Czars

Foxfire Room
12516 Magnolia Blvd.
Valley Village, CA 91607 (The Valley, aka: No Man’s Land)
Map

Like any good dive, the Foxfire Room must be prefaced with some warnings. First off, we should note that when arriving on Magnolia, you will find the front door boarded up and barricaded. Fear not. The entrance, and ample parking, can be achieved through the back alleyway. Second, while the bar showcases many television screens inside, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to watch your favorite sporting event of the evening on any of them, as most are dedicated to showcasing the various security cameras protecting the perimeter.

Reading these disclaimers, one may begin to fear for ones safety, but fear not, we of the World Dive Bar Tour Executive Committee implore you. The Foxfire Room is safely located in what is known colloquially as "The Valley" — a Los Angeles suburb best known as home to the Burbank and Burbank-adjacent studio lots where many of our paychecks originate. This region features tree-lined streets, relatively low crime, and temperatures, on average, 40 degrees hotter than the portions of Los Angeles that we call "Los Angeles."

Our suspicion is that the heightened security is simply for the purpose of protecting the bar from the encroaching Hipster Menace overflowing from Silver Lake into Studio City, and the Douchebag Menace overflowing from Santa Monica into Sherman Oaks. This is a bar for Dive Bar purists, and must be respected as such. Thus, we implore all Dive Bar Devotes to dress appropriately. No Fedoras. No ironic t-shirts. And, for that matter, no t-shirts with a retail value of over $20. Additionally, no drink orders that go by a name of anything other than the exact liquids to be porn (to the best of our knowledge, that is the proper conjugation of the verb "pour" in this sentence… at least in "The Valley") into your glass. Please, take heed of these rule. If you respect the Foxfire Room, it will respect you… otherwise, things may get ugly.

As usual, the casual debauchery starts around 9PM and gets really interesting by 10:00. Come for one drink, or stay for one too many. Bring anyone and everyone, and join us for a great time in the middle of the week. If you arrive early or late, look for the people having a damn good time (it’ll be us), or start having a damn good time on your own (we’ll find you).

Carpe Drink’em!

                                                                                  Alex, Damien, & Travis - WDBT Co-czars

WEDNESDAY, March 26th, 2008

The Green Frog
13624 Moorpark Street
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423

So pick up some discarded, vomit covered shamrock paraphernalia out of a nearby gutter, and confuse the locals by celebrating Old St. Patrick with us at the legendary Green Frog.

On this rare visit to the Northern Territories, the WDBT Executive Council also issues a strong recommend for Pre-Dive-Eats at the only dive bar with the audacity to declare itself as having "The best seafood in LA!" — the legendary Oyster House Saloon, just down the street at 12446 Moorpark.  Stop in for the dive bar ambience and drink selection, the 75¢ oyster shooter happy hour, and the heaping bowls of mussels and linguini, but only if you’re truly brave enough to attempt a dive bar double header.

As usual, the casual debauchery starts around 9PM and gets really interesting by 10:00. Come for one drink, or stay for one too many. Bring anyone and everyone, and join us for a great time in the middle of the week. If you arrive early or late, look for the people having a damn good time (it’ll be us), or start having a damn good time on your own (we’ll find you).

Carpe Drink’em,

Alex, Damien, & Travis - WDBT Co-czars

"Me? In love with a pig? Ha ha! Wait ’til I get the guys at marketing!  Maybe you’ve expected me to go hog-wild! Oh, good, maybe you expect me to bring home the bacon! Ah, the sounds of love - Soue! Oink oink!"

-Kermit

The World Dive Bar Tour regretfully announces that it will not be meeting this week at our previously scheduled dive, The Casting Office, in observance and mourning of its closure, demolition, and replacement with a Starbucks — yet another victim of the abhorrant gentrification of our fine, dilapidated city.

We will be returning next week, October 10th, for the "Valley Spectacular" at the Blue Chip Tavern in Burbank.

As you sit reading this, you might ask yourself, "How shall I appropriately mourn the passing of this fine drinking establishment?" The answer is two-fold: Wednesday night, lock yourself in your house, turn off all the lights, quietly hum Taps, and sip your drink of choice until you can no longer feel the glass. Then, join the World Dive Bar Tour this Friday night at 7pm at the Alpine Village for Oktoberfest. There’s great food, great beer, and a stein holding contest that’s not to miss.

Click the link below for your half-price entry coupon.

http://www.alpinevillage.net/coupon.htm

Hope to see you there.

Carpe drink’em!

Alex, Damien, and Travis, WDBT Co-Czars