The Happiest Hour

I trust that by now you’ve all split a cheeseburger at Nick & Stef’s after work. In a pinch, you know the $1.99 version at McCormick & Schmick’s will do, though that’s a little like wanting Dr Pepper and saying yes to Mr. Pibb. But do you know the Boom Boom Room? If you’re guessing Laguna Beach, take note: I live in East L.A. and have never owned a car, so going to the O.C. for martinis is not in this girl’s cards. I’m talking local landmark, one bus ride from downtown: the No. 68 to Monterey Park.

Nattily dressed “Big Al,” with a Ben Turpin mustache, pilots the karaoke machine. A woman at the bar sips her mai tai and pores over People. On the TV, the game is on. Some game. Somewhere. No one is singing--not yet. A man in a Santana T-shirt shakes my hand. “First-timer?” he asks. “Nah, man, I’ve been coming here since the ‘70s with my Afro and fake ID.” “Oh yeah,” he says, “I remember you.”

The Venice Room (known mysteriously as the Boom Boom Room) is right out of Scorsese’s “Mean Streets.” You keep waiting for Johnny Boy Civello’s manic grin to surface between the vintage gondola oil paintings and the brand-new video poker machines. Owner Salvatore Altadonna tells me the place opened in 1957 and soon became the “Home of the Cook Your Own Steak.” Jude Cairo, the longtime server/hostess/supervising chef/therapist/bouncer, recounts the time 78 steaks were sold in a single evening.

But history is made every night. A substitute Sunday school teacher emerges from a red vinyl booth and belts out a version of “At Last” that would make Etta James blush. A few of the women at the bar sing along--all of us, it seems, pausing at the same moment, silently sending a particular verse out to someone maybe not close enough to hear it.

Outside, the freeway hums with cars moving from high-rise cubicle to Diamond Bar cul-de-sac and from Chino Hills to graveyard shift. Inside, the regulars have hit their marks. We know it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere. And we’re always here.

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The Venice Room, 2428 S. Garfield Ave., Monterey Park; (323) 722-3075