The Bungalow Santa Monica

Sitting on the actual sand with the Pacific at your feet and the pier in the distance, Back on the Beach makes simple California food and cold drinks feel like the whole point of the day.

If you looked up beach bar in a dictionary, Big Dean’s on the Santa Monica boardwalk would have a real shot at the photo: cheap drinks, real bar food, and people-watching the Third Street Promenade crowd never quite finds.

Jim Morrison reportedly drank here, the Doors played nearby, and the Whaler has kept pouring cold drinks on the boardwalk since 1979, Venice at its most bohemian and slightly unhinged.

Jay Fiondella bought this place for a reported one dollar in 1959 and opened with showgirls and a circus elephant, which somehow undersold what came next: Rat Pack regulars, a no-photography rule that protected Sinatra and McQueen, the Pentagon Papers allegedly changing hands at Table 10, and an Apollo 14 astronaut who smuggled one of Jay’s peanuts to the moon and back. The sourdough burgers and cheap well drinks have not changed. Neither has the nerve.