Looking for the best bars and nightlife in Los Angeles? One of the world’s great nightlife cities, LA offers everything from Hollywood clubs and rooftop bars to dive bars and craft-cocktail lounges across dozens of scenes. This local guide covers Los Angeles’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.

Los Angeles’s nightlife scene

LA’s nightlife is enormous and endlessly varied — it spans glamorous Hollywood clubs, rooftop bars with skyline views, speakeasy cocktail lounges, dive bars, breweries, and every scene in between, spread across dozens of distinct neighborhoods. Where you go depends entirely on the vibe: Hollywood and West Hollywood for clubs and see-and-be-seen; Downtown and the Eastside for cocktails and dives.

Best neighborhoods for bars & nightlife in Los Angeles

Hollywood and West Hollywood (the Sunset Strip) are the club-and-celebrity hotspots; Downtown’s Arts District and rooftop bars are booming; Silver Lake, Echo Park, and the Eastside have hip dive and cocktail bars; and Koreatown is famous for late-night karaoke and bars. The Westside and Venice add beachy and upscale spots. For how these areas compare, see our guide to the best neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

What Los Angeles does well: bars, breweries & more

LA does a bit of everything at the highest level — celebrity clubs, rooftop bars, world-class craft-cocktail lounges and speakeasies, dive bars, breweries, and Koreatown’s legendary late-night karaoke-and-bar scene. Every neighborhood has its own flavor.

What to know about going out in Los Angeles

LA is huge and car-oriented — rideshare is essential for a night out (never drive after drinking, and distances are large). Pick a neighborhood and stay local rather than crossing town. Hollywood/WeHo skew clubby and dressier; the Eastside is more casual. Koreatown goes latest.

Where Los Angeles 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’ Los Angeles community, real Los Angeles neighbors share where they genuinely go out. Planning a night out? See our guide to the best things to do in Los Angeles too. Join your Los Angeles neighbors free and get real nightlife recommendations →

Fitting it into a day in Los Angeles

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

More Los Angeles guides

Los Angeles rewards people who dig a little deeper. These related guides map the same neighborhoods from different starting points: Best restaurants in Los Angeles, Date ideas in Los Angeles, Things to do in Los Angeles — 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 Los Angeles. Hours shift, favorites change, and residents always know what is genuinely worth it now. Ask Los Angeles neighbors directly or join your town community free to hear from real locals.

The bars worth crossing town for

Los Angeles nightlife is spread across a very large map, and the practical consequence is that the bar matters less than the district — you are going to commit an evening to one area, so pick the area first. What follows are the places that are genuinely distinctive, with the details that decide whether the trip works.

Tiki-Ti

Tiki-Ti, 4427 W Sunset Blvd, 90027, is the most singular bar in the city. It was opened by Ray Buhen in 1961 in a former violin repair shop, it seats twelve people, its menu runs to more than ninety drinks, and it is still operated by the Buhen family.

Two practical warnings. It is genuinely tiny, so arriving with a large party at peak time does not work — go early, go midweek, or go in a pair. And it opens only a few nights a week, typically Wednesday through Saturday, with published hours that vary between sources; call before you drive. It is worth the effort: there is nothing else like it in Los Angeles, and it has been doing the same thing well for more than sixty years.

Jazz: Sam First

Jazz is one of the highest-volume bar searches in this city, and Sam First, 6171 W Century Blvd, is the room that most rewards it — a proper listening bar with serious cocktails, local beer and wine, built around one of the best-loved Yamaha C7x grand pianos in the city. Music runs Tuesday through Saturday, 6pm to 11pm — not nightly, which is the detail people get wrong.

Its location is its oddity and its advantage: it sits by LAX, a seven-to-ten-minute walk from the terminals, which makes it the single best answer to a long layover in Los Angeles. There are eight parking spaces at the rear reserved for the bar after 6pm, first come first served.

Downtown and the Arts District

Downtown is the most searched area for bars in the city and the easiest place to spend an evening on foot rather than in a car. In the Arts District, Arts District Brewing Co, 828 Traction Ave, 90013, is the operating brewery — worth stating plainly, because the district’s best-known older brewery has permanently closed and still appears in outdated guides. Zinc Cafe and Bar at 580 Mateo St runs to 9pm daily for something earlier and quieter.

The wider Downtown bar scene turns over faster than any other part of the city, particularly the rooftop venues, most of which are attached to hotels and change concept and operator regularly. That is the honest caveat on every rooftop list you will read, including the ones that look authoritative. The Downtown guide covers the district, and for what is actually open and good this month, ask people who live in Los Angeles right now.

The east side

33 Taps, 3725 W Sunset Blvd at Sunset Junction in Silver Lake, is the dependable neighborhood option — a long beer list, a full cocktail bar, food including a vegan menu, running to midnight Thursday through Saturday. In Highland Park, Highland Park Bowl, 5621 N Figueroa St, is a cocktail bar inside the oldest bowling alley in Los Angeles, dating to 1927 — open to 2am on Friday and Saturday, with wood-fired pizza and eight restored lanes.

For live music with a bar attached, The Echo at 1822 W Sunset Blvd and the Echoplex beneath it are the east side’s anchors, and The Wiltern at 3790 Wilshire Blvd, opened 1931, is the mid-size room in Koreatown.

Koreatown

Koreatown is the densest place to drink in Los Angeles and the one that most rewards not planning. The combination that makes it work is that the bars, the barbecue and the late-night kitchens are stacked within the same few blocks, so an evening can move between them on foot — genuinely unusual here. It also runs later than the rest of the city by a wide margin. The Koreatown guide has the detail.

Wine bars, dive bars and the rest

Three categories get searched heavily and deserve an honest answer rather than a padded list.

Wine bars are one of the fastest-growing and fastest-changing categories in Los Angeles, concentrated on the east side around Virgil Village, Silver Lake and Echo Park, and in the Arts District. They are also small, independent, and prone to changing hands — several well-reviewed rooms have closed or changed format recently. Rather than name one that may be gone, the reliable move is to ask what is currently open in the specific neighborhood you are heading to.

Dive bars remain one of the genuine strengths of this city, and the good ones are almost by definition unlisted, unphotographed and neighborhood-specific. Gay bars concentrate heavily in West Hollywood, with additional venues Downtown and on the east side. For all three categories, current local knowledge beats any published list, which is exactly what the community feed is for.

Practical rules for a night out here

Do not plan to drive between districts. Pick one area and stay in it. Koreatown, Downtown and the Sunset Junction stretch of Silver Lake all support a whole evening on foot; almost nothing else in Los Angeles does.

Check the opening nights, not just the hours. Tiki-Ti is shut at the start of the week. Sam First has music five nights, not seven. Highland Park Bowl does not open until late afternoon on weekdays. Turning up on the wrong night is the most common way an evening here fails.

Sort the ride home before the first drink. Parking near the busy strips is difficult by nine and rideshare pricing at closing time is at its worst. This is the single cheapest piece of planning available.

More: restaurants, date ideas, events and things to do in Los Angeles.

Frequently asked questions

What is the nightlife like in Los Angeles?

Enormous and varied — Hollywood and WeHo clubs, rooftop bars, speakeasy cocktail lounges, Eastside dives, breweries, and Koreatown’s late-night karaoke, spread across dozens of scenes.

Where are the best bars in Los Angeles?

Hollywood and West Hollywood for clubs, Downtown’s Arts District for rooftops and cocktails, Silver Lake and Echo Park for hip dives, and Koreatown for late-night bars and karaoke.

Where do locals go out in Los Angeles?

Locals favor Eastside cocktail and dive bars, Koreatown, and neighborhood spots over the tourist-heavy Hollywood clubs — LA neighbors share picks in our community.