Venice Ale House

Venice invented the counterculture and then kept reinventing it, and the Venice Beach Club still bottles that anything-goes energy one cold drink at a time.

The view is free, the cold beer is not, and either way The Waterfront gives you a front-row deck for the endless parade of humanity that is the Venice Beach Boardwalk.

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.

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.

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.