Let’s talk dive bars.
Dive bars should not be confused with local's bars: homey, comfortable, inexpensive neighborhood hangouts, often family-owned. ‘Cheers’-esque places with darts, where the bartender knows your first name and your brother’s first name.

No. Dive bars are shit holes. They’re great shit holes, but shit holes nonetheless. Their décor is comprised of poorly framed garage-sale art that the owner genuinely thinks ‘adds something’; the furniture is seemingly acquired by stealthy dumpster diving in the early dawn hours. They smell. Their jukeboxes are broken and full of homemade CDs. Their gambling screens freeze and eat your money. The drinks are dangerously strong. There is an elderly man everyone knows slumped over unconscious on the bar. The bartender knows you, but he’s probably a grumpy old bastard who’ll never acknowledge it, or his embittered son.

Lately, I’ve had several friends suggest ‘dive bars’ to me, knowing there’s a hole in my soul, once filled by The Turkey’s Nest (best dive bar in Greenpoint/possibly only genuine dive bar bordering the hipster-infested Williamsburg) and Mars Bar (I committed an act of prostitution in the back room there, but that’s another story). I’ve felt tragically misled on each occasion. A dive bar isn’t a hip, stylish, dimly lit, renovated bar with tattooed cool kids working behind the counter. A dive bar is not a place with a bearded DJ playing country music ‘ironically’. A dive bar, most importantly, doesn’t charge eight bucks for a weak Jack and Coke.

So, how about Little Joy. On one hand, it barely squeaks by as a dive bar: it has DJs, musical theme nights, hipster bartenders, over-priced drinks, and attracts a fair amount of American Apparel whores. BUT: graffiti covering the walls, Latino pool hustlers, surly, pissed off bartenders who hate you, the general squalor, poor lighting and lack of air conditioning put it back into play. The final signs? A broken game machine in the corner, the fact that your friends will be initially grossed out upon entry, pool tables that don’t qualify as legally sized, and they occasionally run out of real cups and resort to plastic. There you have it: a dive bar.

A good one, too. For all the nights where I stand around and gaze in horror at the crowd and get mad because my drink is too hard to get or weak, there are the nights when the music is great, I know everyone at the bar, get free drinks, and although some people have messed it up, the infamous ‘Is it a peanut? Is it a poop? It’s wearing a monocle’ illustration on the girls’ bathroom wall is what nails it as my favorite bar in L.A. I strongly recommend it, but not really, because if every asshole starts going there I won’t like it anymore, so I tell you guys to continue going to the Short Stop up the street.

Little Joy Cocktail Lounge
1477 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Phone: (213) 250-3417