Looking for the best bars and nightlife in Long Beach? This diverse coastal city has an eclectic, unpretentious nightlife of beachside bars, craft breweries, and a lively downtown and Retro Row. This local guide covers Long Beach’s nightlife scene, the best neighborhoods to go out in, the kinds of bars the city does well, and how to find where locals actually drink.

Long Beach’s nightlife scene

Long Beach’s nightlife is laid-back and eclectic, matching its diverse, beach-city character — a mix of dive bars, craft breweries, beachside spots, cocktail bars, and one of LA County’s notable LGBTQ scenes. Downtown, Belmont Shore, and Retro Row are the main going-out areas, with a casual, come-as-you-are vibe.

Best neighborhoods for bars & nightlife in Long Beach

Downtown and the East Village Arts District have eclectic bars and breweries; Belmont Shore (2nd Street) is a lively beachside bar-and-restaurant strip; Retro Row (4th Street) has hip, vintage-cool bars; and the Broadway corridor anchors Long Beach’s LGBTQ nightlife. For how these areas compare, see our guide to the best neighborhoods in Long Beach.

What Long Beach does well: bars, breweries & more

Long Beach does dive bars, craft breweries, and beachside spots especially well, plus cocktail bars and a welcoming LGBTQ scene. It’s an unpretentious, diverse nightlife town — more neighborhood-and-beach than club district.

What to know about going out in Long Beach

Belmont Shore and downtown are walkable within themselves; the Metro A Line and rideshare connect areas (and reach LA). The scene is casual and beach-influenced. Weekend nights on 2nd Street and in downtown get lively.

Where Long Beach locals actually drink

The best bars change constantly — the hot new spot, the beloved dive, the patio that’s perfect right now — and the honest picks rarely match the tourist lists. On Neighborhood Nurturers’ Long Beach community, real Long Beach neighbors share where they genuinely go out. Planning a night out? See our guide to the best things to do in Long Beach too. Join your Long Beach neighbors free and get real nightlife recommendations →

Fitting it into a day in Long Beach

The best bars here reflect the neighborhoods around them, so where you drink shapes the whole evening. What sets Long Beach apart is how close everything sits together. Start near Belmont Shore, work in one of the spots from this guide, and you are minutes from Bluff Park if you want to keep going. Locals often round out a great night out with a detour to the El Dorado Nature Center or a quieter stop at the Naples canals. Because the distances are short, you can improvise as you go rather than lock the whole day down in advance.

More Long Beach guides

Long Beach rewards people who dig a little deeper. These related guides map the same neighborhoods from different starting points: Best restaurants in Long Beach, Date ideas in Long Beach, Things to do in Long Beach — enough to plan a whole day or two.

Get a local’s take

Guides are a starting point; the current, on-the-ground details come from people who live in Long Beach. Hours shift, favorites change, and residents always know what is genuinely worth it now. Ask Long Beach neighbors directly or join your town community free to hear from real locals.

Long Beach Bars by District

Long Beach nightlife is neighborhood nightlife. There is no single bar street; there are four or five distinct scenes, and which one suits you depends entirely on whether you want a 1922 institution, a rooftop, a craft brewery or a proper dive.

The Institutions

Joe Jost’s is the one every local names first. It has served the city since 1922, sits near downtown, and is famous for its pickled eggs and its complete refusal to change. If you visit one bar in Long Beach for the history rather than the drink list, this is it. Legends Bar + Grill in Belmont Shore has run since 1979 and has a legitimate claim as one of the first modern American sports bars in the country, with wall-to-wall memorabilia and an enormous projection screen that fills the room on game days.

Brewery Knolls: Bixby Knolls and Atlantic Avenue

Bixby Knolls has the highest concentration of breweries in Long Beach and locals call the stretch “Brewery Knolls”. There are beer festivals and a double-decker bus that rotates between the beer spots. Beachwood Brewing Bixby Knolls has been brewing since 2011 and pours more than 30 craft beers on tap. Rasselbock Kitchen and Beer Garden at 4020 Atlantic Avenue carries over 35 German and Belgian beers with schnitzel, Bavarian pretzels and elk sausage to match. Knolls Restaurant at 4354 Atlantic Avenue, open since April 2015, keeps 24 beers on tap. The neighborhood’s monthly First Fridays keeps businesses open late with live bands along Atlantic.

Downtown Cocktails and Rooftops

The Blind Donkey is the downtown cocktail bar and beer hall that most lists open with. The Stave, on the corner of Broadway and The Promenade, holds what is widely described as the deepest collection of Scotch, bourbon and whiskey in the city plus more than 20 draft beers. The Grasshopper and Roxanne’s both draw repeated mentions for craft cocktails, Roxanne’s with a more relaxed neighborhood feel. BO-beau kitchen + roof tap and HALO Rooftop Bar cover the rooftop end.

The Dive Bars

Long Beach has an unusually strong dive scene. Alex’s Bar is the best known, with a long live-music history. Sweetwater Saloon, V Room, Blondie’s, Til-2 Club and Crane’s Bar all turn up repeatedly on local dive lists. These are cash-friendly, unpretentious rooms where the appeal is the regulars rather than the cocktail program.

Belmont Shore and 2nd Street

2nd Street is compact enough that a bar crawl works end to end on foot, which is not true of most Long Beach nightlife. Simmzy’s runs rotating craft taps in a coastal-casual room, Panama Joe’s Cantina at 5100 E 2nd Street is the loud late option, Dogz Bar + Grill is openly dog-friendly, and the island bar at Nick’s on 2nd is where you go for a properly made cocktail. Full detail in our Belmont Shore guide.

Practical Notes

Parking is the main constraint in Belmont Shore, where meters run $3.00 per hour from 10:00am to 7:00pm and free up after that, making a late drink far easier than a Saturday lunch. Bixby Knolls and the downtown core are both easier to park in. The Blue Line light rail serves downtown, which makes the downtown cocktail bars the most practical option if you would rather not drive. See also restaurants in Long Beach and Long Beach date ideas.

How Long Beach Nightlife Actually Works

The thing that surprises people who come down from Los Angeles is how little of Long Beach nightlife is about being seen. This is a working port city with a large university population and a long, stubborn independent streak, and the bar culture reflects all three. The rooms that have lasted longest here are the ones that never chased a trend: a place pouring beer since 1922 and still known for pickled eggs is not an ironic novelty in Long Beach, it is simply the oldest bar people still use.

That has a practical consequence. If you arrive looking for a velvet-rope experience you will be disappointed, and if you arrive looking for a genuinely good neighborhood bar within walking distance of where you are staying, you will almost certainly find one. The city rewards picking a district and staying in it rather than trying to cross town twice in an evening.

The rough character split runs like this. Downtown is where the cocktail programs and the rooftops are, and it is the only part of the city well served enough by transit that you can reasonably leave the car behind. Bixby Knolls is where the beer is, and it drinks more like a suburban main street than a nightlife district, in a good way. Belmont Shore is the walkable crawl, mixed in with restaurants and full of people who live within a few blocks. The dives are scattered across the older eastside and downtown edges, and they are where the live music tends to be.

Timing, Cost and Etiquette

Weeknights are genuinely pleasant across all of these districts, and most rooms are busy but not overwhelmed. Friday and Saturday after about nine is when Belmont Shore and downtown fill up properly. Sunday afternoons skew toward the beer halls and the patios rather than the cocktail bars.

On cost, Long Beach is noticeably cheaper than comparable nightlife in Los Angeles proper, which is one of the quieter reasons people cross the county line for an evening here. Craft beer prices are competitive because there is real local production supporting them, and the dive bars remain genuinely inexpensive rather than expensive rooms styled to look cheap.

A word on getting home. Belmont Shore’s meters stop enforcing at 7:00pm, which makes a late drink far easier to park for than an afternoon one, but it also means the neighborhood fills with cars belonging to people who intend to drive later. Rideshare coverage is good across all the districts named here, and downtown is on the light rail. Plan the way home before the first drink, not after the third.

Finally, the seasonal note: the first Saturday in December closes 2nd Street entirely for the Belmont Shore Christmas Parade, which draws around 30,000 people. The bars along the route do their biggest night of the year, and getting a table without a plan is close to impossible.

Frequently asked questions

What is the nightlife like in Long Beach?

Eclectic and unpretentious — dive bars, craft breweries, beachside spots, and cocktail bars, plus a notable LGBTQ scene, across downtown, Belmont Shore, and Retro Row.

Where are the best bars in Long Beach?

Downtown and the East Village for eclectic bars, Belmont Shore’s 2nd Street for beachside spots, Retro Row for vintage-cool bars, and Broadway for LGBTQ nightlife.

Where do locals go out in Long Beach?

Locals favor Retro Row, downtown breweries, and neighborhood dives over tourist spots — Long Beach neighbors share picks in our community.