Los Angeles’ Arts District is a cognitively dissonant mix of hip watering holes, pricy lofts, and abandoned packing factories. It’s the kind of neighborhood where you’re still tempted to roll up your car windows and lock your doors. But if you know where to look, beneath the sketchy industrial exteriors, you’ll find the best whiskey bars and breweries around.
Here’s where to get caffeinated and inebriated in style in this downtown-adjacent neighborhood—you might need to drive by them twice before you find them, but you’ll be glad you did.
1. The Springs
The Springs is one of those places that could only exist in Los Angeles. Part yoga studio, part spa, part bar, and part vegan restaurant, it’s an industrial chic warehouse space that’s open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Come in for colon hydrotherapy or fire cupping (I’m still unclear about what that is, but it involves a heat lamp and a cup) and after bliss out with a s’more smoothie (cacao, housemade almond milk, maple syrup, and barely-there Thai chili).
If you want to retox after your detox, The Springs promises the cleanest buzz around. The bartender advised me to try their Night Moves: a prosecco sake spritzer with beet juice, dill, and aphrodisiac tonic (derived from mushrooms—not the magical kind). Their other drink offerings include on-tap kombucha ($5), a clay and water tonic that is decidedly medicinal tasting ($3), and an almond milk and oat horchata ($10). They’re currently renovating their restaurant so they aren’t serving food, but when the kitchen reopens in spring 2016, they’ll have hummus plates to help with your hangovers.
2. Eighty Two
Photo by Wally Gobetz CC BY-NC-ND
Straddling the neighborhoods of Little Tokyo and the Arts District, this bar/arcade is a cult classic. In the absence of actual signage, look for the psychedelic turquoise mural and follow the sound of the electronic blips and bells. Inside, the glow of vintage video games and pinball machines greets you.
The dark, cave-like space gets pretty loud after 9 p.m., but it’s still a great spot for bro-time or adventurous Tinder dates. Eighty Two’s drinks are surprisingly good given the fact that they don’t have to be. If you find your motor skills dulled after a beer or two, order a Wizard Mode: the cold brew coffee mixed with rye whiskey will give your motor neurons the boost they need.
3. Zinc Cafe
If you’re looking for a place to day drink in the Arts District, there’s no better place than Zinc’s garden patio. Undoubtedly its best asset, it’s the perfect place to recline under the shade of olive trees to the soundtrack of a bubbling fountain. Save for the occasional 18-wheelers rumbling by, you almost forget that you’re in the middle of an industrial district.
