Facebook/Purple Orchid

Smokin' at the Purple Orchid

Even if it's reborn as part of the newly-imagined Clifton's, many still mourned when aquarium-filled Bahooka tiki bar in Rosemead closed its doors recently. But in NoHo, the Tonga Hut will be celebrating its 55th birthday this year -- and appropriately for such an exotic craze, the phenomenon began right here in California.

Ernest Gantt was just back from his travels in the South Pacific and couldn't get the memory of palm trees, nubile women and exotic carvings out of his head -- so he opened a bar called Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood in 1934. Trader Vic's opened in Oakland a few years later and many imitators followed across the country, as World War Two brought military tales of faraway islands back to these shores.

See also: To Join the Loyal Order of the Drooling Bastard, You Must Drink 78 Cocktails

Times have changed, but there are still plenty of places you can throw on a Hawaiian shirt and feel right at home. Turn the page for our five favorite tiki bars here in Los Angeles.

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A. Simmons

York, interior

The Place: The York, 5018 York Blvd., Los Angeles; 323-255-9675.

The Hours: 10:30a.m.-2 a.m. Mon..-Sun.

The Digs: At Highland Park's The York, a towering shelf of booze looms over the L-shaped bar. Televisions partially obscured by low-hanging bulbs come to life with Lakers games, and a stretch of comfortable cushioned seats lines the other side of the shelf.

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Flickr/naotakem

a Manhattan

You make reasonable assumptions about what you're going to drink depending on where you are. You don't go to Manhattan Beach to drink scotch, any more than you would Ensenada; you expect something more beachy there, in a tropical, caipirinha-colada vein perhaps. In Silver Lake you may be able to order a cosmopolitan, but it's at your peril, in deference to absinthe, mezcal, or some other mouth-numbing concoctions.

On Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, between bites of sushi, you might want to pop in a few of the watering holes the strip has become known for, like the Laurel Tavern, Page 71, your odd hookah emporium. In most of these places you'd get more or less what you expect, easygoing drinks, modest riffs on fairly safe cocktails, made with infused vodkas or wan departures from a predictable palette. In the last half-decade, it might as well be called Mojito Row.

So it's a relief to walk into the darkly lit, moody Black Market Liquor Bar, a gastropub on Ventura, and feel out of place.

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Andrea V.

Interior, Verdugo

The Place: Verdugo Bar, 3408 Verdugo Rd., Los Angeles; 323-257-3408.

The Hours: 6 p.m.-2 a.m. Mon.-Fri.; 3 p.m.-2 a.m. Sat.-Sun.

The Digs: The vertical white "Cocktails" sign outside reveals nothing about the soul of the place. You'd expect a time-worn hovel inside with a scuffed pool table and unfriendly sots crumpling over the bar. Or you'd expect crowds of young people in expensive denim, milling about in a passable simulation of the dank old man dive archetype.

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Brandon Buck

Avoid the Superbowl

Not all of us were swaddled in Lakers jerseys straight from the womb or outfited in 49ers onesies as toddlers. There are plenty amongst the sports fanatics who dread play-by-plays at parties and worry about their job security when everyone is raving about rankings around the proverbial water cooler.

To those who don't get a rush of adrenaline from the marriage of bleu cheese and wings, and who are not planning an 8-layer ultimate dip for Sunday -- rest assured you are not alone. If your fantasy league kicked you to the curb, if you've already lost money on the game, or if you still don't know from where the Ravens hail (you know who you are), check out these 5 places to eat and drink this Sunday at 3:30. p.m PT.

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Elina Shatkin

The Surly Goat

Draft Magazine has put out its list of the country's 100 best beer bars, and Los Angeles has six spots on the list (if you include Burbank).

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Faculty LA

The Faculty LA

In most cities, when scripted well, grabbing a bite before a show makes for a satisfying, full evening, and if all goes well, by the final curtain call, you're ready for round two: dessert. In L.A., that pre-theater dinner agenda comes with a stressful, time-pinched commute. On a particularly bad traffic day, you miss out on that fresh sea urchin at The Hungry Cat entirely, damn it -- and that glass of wine, which you could really use as you settle into those pricey Book of Mormon orchestra seats (after the intermission). Enjoy the show.

These are the moments when neighborhood bars with tightly edited beer menus, like The Faculty, and their inexpensive theater companions like the Sacred Fools Theater Company, remind us of the casual, and quirky, pre-theater drinks that this city does so well.

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G. Snyder

Darabar Secret Thai Cuisine

When you think of bottle service, you probably think of overpriced liquor, right? Nightclubs that mark up bottles of vodka to ungodly levels -- 900 percent isn't uncommon -- which are an essential fixture in parts of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where most of the "actual cost" of the booze goes towards a table where you can bump elbows with the likes of Dwight Howard and Ke$ha.

But if you were to head just east along Hollywood Blvd. to Darabar Secret Thai Cuisine, a lounge-ish bar/restaurant located in the same strip mall as Carousel, you'd find what is pretty much the most ridiculous, rock-bottom deal for bottle service that you'll ever see in Los Angeles.

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via King Eddy's FB

King Eddy's Saloon

The threat had been hanging over downtown's drinking scene like an unpaid bar tab for sometime now: How long before historic dive King Eddy's Saloon would be closed down for a remodeling at the hands of it's new owners, Michael Leko and Will Shamlian (Library Bar, Spring Street Bar, Pizza Urbano, Coffee Bar)?

It looks like Dec. 16 will the last day for the old King Eddy's Saloon, a dive bar whose divey-ness puts all others to shame; where the official motto is "Where nobody gives a f**k about your name"; where beer costs $2.50 and well drinks $3. It's the holder of the longest operating liquor license in Los Angeles, built on the ground floor of the 120-year-old King Edward Hotel. During Prohibition it was briefly turned into a piano shop -- with a secret speakeasy hidden in the basement, of course.

Authors John Fante and Charles Bukowski were once known to drink here. (In Fante's novel Ask The Dust, protagonist Arturo Bandini blows his first writing royalty check on the call girls slumming in King Eddy's basement.)

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Flickr/pelcinary

At the HMS Bounty

As a city filled with transplants, Los Angeles has more than its share of people spending Turkey Day away from home, and chances are a good portion of them will be doing the only reasonable thing someone should do when spending Thanksgiving solo: Hit the nearest bar.

Sad? Depressing? No way, pilgrim. Before you know it you'll be rounding your third Scotch while you swap deeply personal stories with hard-drinking regulars, as if you were in a Bukowski novel. At some point, someone will play "Piano Man," and perhaps someone else will buy the bar a round of shots in an act of social commiseration. Indeed, it might be the only day of the year when everyone who pulls up a stool is granted honorary "regular" status.

While a good percentage of bars will be open Thanksgiving, there are certain establishments you should prioritize. These are places with stiff cocktails, dimly lit rooms, and slow saxophone solos echoing in the distance. Why shed a tear when you can have a beer, after all? Here are 5 bars to visit on Thanksgiving Day.

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