SIMON'S TAKE - Possibly it's unfair to review a bar after just one visit. For example, we arrived at Prince o' Whales for a friend's birthday function at about 10:30 pm on Saturday, in a section of town on the Westside that I basically never go anywhere near. I was all about to write a review discussing how Prince o' Whales is pretty much the most depressing bar I've ever been to on a Saturday night, because the crowd in there, friends aside, seemed more like it was 1 p.m. on a Tuesday and acted as if they were just drinking as much as they could before they had to go back for the rest of their shift at the slaughterhouse. But then I go online and read about how Tuesday night, not Saturday, is the happening night at Prince o' Whales, because that's when they have their drink specials. And apparently the limited menu of bar food is really good. I wouldn't know about either of these things, because I wasn't hungry and I got charged $14.75 for a Guinness and a glass of the house wine, a Coppola Cabernet (although I will note that the bartender filled the glass of wine literally to its brim, as if she were filling a pint, which I've never seen anyone do before but entirely approve of).
So maybe I don't know enough about this bar to write a review of it. It's also possible that I just hate the whole fucking western half of Los Angeles, with the possible exception of a couple bars in Redondo Beach, the Museum of Jurassic Technology and the ocean, and therefore am poorly qualified to review a chill "beach culture" bar like this one. It's difficult to explain why I dislike beach culture, but to briefly summarize, what others see as a laid-back, peaceful and in-the-moment attitude, I see as insufferably hedonistic, lazy and dull. Whenever I'm at a beach bar, I want to make everyone in it do push-ups.
Oh yeah, Prince o' Whales. One side has a large bar and a stage for musical acts. The other side has another, smaller bar, a lot of televisions showing sports, a dartboard and some sports-themed video games. Then there's a back patio area with a ping-pong table, which okay, that's cool. And I like how you can be in the room with the music or not and still have a place to drink, reminding me of my favorite concert venue, Spaceland. But still, I'm sorry, this place just sucks. The people here are depressing, there's way too many dudes (2:1 male to female ratio, offhand) and everywhere you go, even though there's no one there, you feel vaguely claustrophobic.
In one of the later Cerebus books, Dave Sim envisioned a matriarchal society in which all men are kept more or less imprisoned within bars; they can leave whenever they want, but in order to do so, they have to stay entirely sober for a week. Thus, the majority of the male population simply stays in these bars and is miserable and drunk all the time and thinks about women constantly in a sort of hateful, wistful way.
This bar is exactly like that.
Beers on draft: Guinness, Budweiser, Bud Light, Newcastle Brown Ale, Sierra Nevada.
EVAN'S TAKE - Simon was relatively thorough here, so I'm just going to list a couple thoughts and observations on the Prince O'Whales.
1. Prince o' Whales is literally the dumbest name I've ever heard for a bar... and yet simultaneously pretty great. It seems like it would befit a fictional dive in a neo-noir movie featuring an actor like William Fichtner or M. Emmet Walsh as a malevolent bartender or something.
2. The staff was nice. The bartender poured strong... and the vaguely crossed-eyed doorman seemed genuinely happy to have us. It seems like he'd be pissed to invite more dudes to an already pretty ridiculous sausage-fest... but the place is called Prince o'Whales, so who knows. Maybe me and Simon were missing something.
3. The ping pong patio area had a very threatening vibe... for no reason. It's a ping pong patio! Here's a bit of advice to all you tatted-up badasses out there. If you want to look really tough and menacing... don't congregate around a ping pong table. You can't do that unless you are Yakuza. I've heard that they LOVE that shit.
4. The place reeked of french fries.
5. Two or three good looking women in the entire joint... but they were pretty hot.
6. After leaving I started to question my love of dive bars. I wondered whether I was getting soft, and was better off sucking down high priced wine in some ritzy Los Feliz joint... but then I remembered something: I love DARK dive bars. Kind of quiet... kind of gloomy, depressing little shitholes, with ROOM, and the chance of an odd sexual encounter with another lonely alcoholic... preferably one without a penis. A good jukebox helps too. This place couldn't satiate that hunger, and basically made me miserable, so fuck it... I hate the Prince o'Whales.
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