by Anika Bukon
The Mandrake, the LA artworld’s mainstay bar on a small stretch of La Cienega in Culver City tucked among small and mid size galleries, had its final night this past weekend. Rumor has it that the space is being taken over by a new owner who will completely revamp this storied neighborhood bar (translate: triple the drink prices because they added raw wood and metal finishes and white or black tile) which is, actually a shame.
The Mandrake was the kind of bar that everyone thinks they’ve been to at least once and is sure they have a story about.
It wasn’t my local bar, but it was a place that I’d been to a handful of times after visiting some art opening close by. Arguably an artist’s hang out, it was often filled with punks, dancers, porn stars, surfers, professional basketball players, and gallerists (yes, these are all people I’ve met while having a drink at the bar) and it is / was the kind of place where the moody lighting, inexpensive drinks (by LA standards) and crowd made it easy (like super easy) to just hang out without feeling like you were in the middle of a scene to be seen but still hanging around with those same rad people on a significantly more mellow, and better, level – with cheap drinks and a bartender named Cha Cha. That alone, made it rad.
If Saturday’s long line out the door of people (who traveled from all over the city) waiting to get in for its final night is not enough of an indication as to its importance in the lives and history of Los Angeles, the Mandrake and its matchbooks and photobooth images will, I predict, in some not so distant future —end up in some art installation in one of the galleries that it once shared a sidewalk with.