Venice Ale House

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.

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.

Marina del Rey is one of the largest man-made small-craft harbors on Earth, and Whiskey Red’s claims maybe the best patio on it: 180-degree harbor views over beer-battered fish and chips that keep the crowd well past sunset.