The L.A. Musical History Tour
Barney's Beanery
8447 Santa Monica, West Hollywood
Did Janis Joplin really hit Jim Morrison with a Southern Comfort bottle
here? It's easy to imagine, since they both hung out at Barney's in the
late 1960s (she partied here and at the Troubadour the night she died).
Barney's has long been home to rockers, actors, and bikers on all rungs
of the social ladder. Its three rooms house pool tables, booths, and a bar
in a smoky truck stop-like atmosphere that is earthy and real, an oddity
in Hollywood. (But it's more genteel than in the past: fairly recently they
removed their "No Fagots Allowed" sign from the bar.) Barney's
offers forty chili dishes, 140 hamburger arrangements, and claims to carry
293 kinds of beer.
It ain't your California haute cuisine.