Coordinates: 11780 W. Pico Blvd., 90064
Neighborhood: West LA, but spiritually closer to Downtown
Happiest Hours: M-F 5pm-8pm and all night Sundays, plus rock-bottom "Recession" pricing on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Apparently, even nightlife impresarios, including The Single-handed Savior of Downtown Los Angeles, have to get their start somewhere.
I mean, of course, in this case Cedd Moses, whose march to conquer the the Downtown LA nightlife scene has been met with cheers, thrown laurels, and winsome and comely girls of virtue true. That's unlike Sam Nazarian's march through Hollywood, was more like the Soviet Union's march through Eastern Europe. Except for, you know, the whole "selling out to reality television" thing.
The difference, though, is while Nazarian (and his minion, Brent Bolthouse) make clubs and nightspots that celebrities and the people who care about celebrities want to go to, Moses and his 213Downtown collective make bars that LA people want to go to. Given the choice between going to Area or Hyde and Seven Grand or the Golden Gopher, I'll take the latter two every time, as will the vast majority of locals I know. Clubs like Area are for people who think that's what LA is like all the time, while Moses's bars are for people who are glad that clubs like Area exist to draw the gawkers and the shiny-black-shoes crowd away from the good places.
The only bummer about this whole dime-store-psychology breakdown of the LA bar scene is this -- for us Westsiders, it's a bit of a hike to make it Downtown, and into Moses-controlled turf. And, while that may technically be true, I -- being your intrepid, Sherpa-like guide and host -- found a little loophole that you can bust out in case of emergency.
Did you know that Cedd Moses used to own Liquid Kitty? Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn't.
But you know, now that I DO know that fact, it all kind of makes sense. Here's a bar that's been around a while, serves pretty great drinks that are made with care and good ingredients, and whose decor/overall theme hearkens back to a simpler, more drink-oriented time. And, given the kind of businesses and buildings that surround Liquid Kitty, it wasn't in the world's best or coolest neighborhood when it first opened. In that sense, the LA bar scholar can look at Liquid Kitty as a sort petri dish, or test kitchen, for Moses's grand designs on Downtown.
The Vitals: Liquid Kitty serves booze. Great big glasses of booze. No appetizers. No small bites menu. In fact, no food at all. Only booze. But, despite the "Swingers"-era-looking neon martini glass sign out front, they do a little bit more than just six ounces of chilled vodka in a glass. Rather, they have some nice, old-school cocktails made with care by (in this case) Damian, a 12-year veteran of the place. Prices and specials are good -- $4 well drinks, $4 "Lowlifes"( i.e, a shot and a can of PBR), and $9 specialty drinks, which are jumbo-yet-well-made cocktails like the Manhattan and the Sazerac. Moreover, there's none of this "ultralounge" pretentious bullshit that pervades Hollywood -- in fact, Liquid Kitty has much more of a classic-but-divey feel about it, just like Moses's latest Downtown efforts. So, in a sense, the place is not only a sociological middle ground of Moses's career as a nightlife maven (he doesn't have a stake in the place anymore), but it's also a place to witness the changing tastes of LA's nightlife culture as a whole. It's almost like "Mad Men," which attempts to show the transition between "The Greatest Generation" and the Boomers. That's my pitch -- if Liquid Kitty were a TV show, it would be "Mad Men." And if "Mad Men" was a bar, it would be Liquid Kitty.
Or hell, maybe it's just a good bar with great deals.
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