Mindy Kaling says “A best friend isn’t a person, it’s a tier.” I feel that way about a lot of "bests" and "favorites" - I've never had just one best friend, favorite food, favorite drink, favorite park, favorite way to spend a Sunday, favorite bar.
My first favorite bar was Bigfoot Lodge (now distinguished by its Atwater location as Bigfoot Lodge East), where I first went shortly after coming of legal drinking age. Spent so many nights there with friends after shows at the Greek, or after doing something else but before we wanted to go home. I realize now that the log cabin motif, including an animatronic Smokey the Bear, was a hipster affectation, but at the time I thought it was amazing.
My favorite Boston bar was actually in Cambridge, called Charlie’s. The first time I went with my friend Rian, we saw Chuck Klosterman, whose reading we'd attended earlier nearby. He was waiting outside the bathroom and we spoke to him, awkwardly. This bar also had an outstanding jukebox where I once played the White Stripes "Black Math" and about 6 people instantly got up to leave.
I’ve had a lot of favorite bars. These days, if you asked me what my favorite bar was, depending on my mood I'd answer Seven Grand downtown, Tony’s Darts Away in Burbank, or Bar One in NoHo. But as of September 9th, I can no longer answer Bar One - it's gone. The owners have sold it to someone else.
The NoHo/Studio City area has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to bar and restaurant openings, with something new to get excited about on a constant basis. I’ve relished this for years now, always counting my blessings that I was in the center of so many cool places, attending the "soft opens" and thinking the good times would last forever. It never occurred to me that any place I loved could close down.
Bar One was open for 10 years and I was a customer there for 9 of them. In 2008, I went with Rian and Nick a few times - Nick knew of it, as he was the only Valley resident among us at the time. I always liked the vibe and the sangria. It was prior to the craft beer zeitgeist we’re currently living through, at least as far as I was concerned. I believe this was the first place I had Chimay and one of the places that expanded my beer horizons. It was tiny, it was red, it felt like a secret.
In 2010, my friend Jenny had this app called Happy Hour which would (surprise) find happy hours by your location. We were hanging out one random Thursday and it was an odd time, maybe 8:30, but Bar One was one of the few places with an extended happy hour. She’d never even heard of the place. It had been a while for me but I remembered the sangria, and we checked it out. I remember it being a sausage fest where some local weirdo with a proto-vape pen wouldn’t stop talking to us. But for some reason, we went again a few weeks later, it was completely different, and the love affair was born. The date was September 9, 2010 - 7 years to the day before they would close their doors. I know that because Facebook's "On this day" feature reminded me of some dashed-off status update I wrote at the time: "This place has the best music."
They also had the best beer list. It was small - they maybe had 10 taps to work with - but so thoughtful and original. Being spoiled as we are in LA with so many great places for beer, sometimes you can get a little jaded and think you’ve drunk it all. Bar One was consistently providing options I hadn’t tried, and I was always amazed at how quickly they cycled through different beers. You never saw the same list twice.
I had my 30th birthday party there and the band heckled me for yelling "WHOOO" too much. I went to vinyl night, Oktoberfest, trivia on Sundays. In 2013-ish I started a Valley craft beer group and had our 2nd outing there. More than being a group spot, I'll remember it as being a great place to talk. I’ve been there on more chill Fridays than I can count, at which point Edward and I either call it after 2 beers, or use it as a springboard to further hijinks.
It’s not the only bar I’ve ever visited by myself - being a business traveler, there's something you grow to love about sitting at the bar solo, eating dinner or enjoying a cocktail. I'm pretty sure it was the first bar I ever went to alone, though, and definitely the only one I've gone to alone in the last 5 years. The owners (a married couple) created a space where you could feel comfortable going by yourself, both from a social and a safety standpoint. The bartenders and patrons were all so friendly and cool. Since my preferred time to visit a bar tends to be at, like, 7pm (so I can be home early), I was sometimes the only customer and ended up getting into surprisingly real conversations with both owners.
For the last 4 or 5 years, it's felt like the closest thing I have to Cheers. It’s gonna be hard to get used to a life where if I’m bored on a Friday, I can’t go there.
After the new owners take it over and make it their own, I look forward to stopping by for a drink. It'll be different, and I hope I'll like it, and I'll always tip my glass to the place that was there before. And I'll pour some out for that place, anyone who ever poured me a pint, and all the wonderful times I had there.
