A Warning to the Brew Crew

One day it’s a dive, a pleasantly musty dungeon reeking of old-school charm. Then, seemingly overnight, it becomes a Hollywood scene, packed with people shouting, “Dude, you’ve got to be here!” into cell phones.

The regulars get crowded out by nouveau hipsters, twentysomethings who discovered Lounge Culture via the DVD edition of “Swingers.” They roost in faux thriftwear from Macy’s, soaking up the atmosphere until it’s evaporated like the smoke from a strategically poised cigarette.

Few are able to see it coming. But local barfly Frank Mulvey, author of “The 101 Best Bars of Los Angeles,” knows the warning signs that a hideaway is about to be invaded by celebrity-obsessed poseurs, or, worse yet, be scrubbed and mopped.

“Good bars have a good mix of people,” he says, meaning old and young, rich and poor. When that mix begins to give way to strictly younger clientele, it’s time to watch the door. “Like lemmings, they all march in dressed in black, talking on cell phones.”

Another big giveaway: real estate developers in the ‘hood.

Since 1942, the legendary Hollywood dive Boardner’s has been a humble place, friendly to Vietnam vets, serious drinkers and the occasional movie legend. Then, three months ago, the Hollywood & Highland retail complex opened. A slew of nattier bars arrived in anticipation of upscale traffic, offering gimmicks with their drinks, like manicures or vintage shoes for sale.

Not surprisingly, Boardner’s is changing too. Co-owner Tricia La Belle says she’s dolling up the place in hopes of attracting more celebrity parties. La Belle scored a lease on the 2,500-square-foot space immediately to the north. She plans to carve arches into the dividing wall and, by April, to add two lounges, double the size of the VIP loft, build a new deejay booth and add a larger dance floor. “We really want to be part of the new Hollywood,” she says.

And yet, she promises that the Boardner’s bar will remain its old self, with only a minor cleanup planned and the old and new spaces clearly separated.

“People are not here to sit and point fingers and say, ‘Look who is sitting over there,’” La Belle says of the original bar. “It’s a place for everybody to come who is a Hollywood-ite.” In other words, the new space will attract the glitter while the old bar keeps its dust--at least, figuratively. The question: Can Boardner’s have it both ways?

“I’m not sure it won’t change,” says Reuben Jones thoughtfully over a bottle of beer. A longtime customer and former employee, Jones, 46, expects that the pretty people will inevitably drift into the old space. And that’s no small change. “Whenever I leave town for business, my one concern is, ‘Will I come back to Boardner’s?’ And I mean in a philosophical sense, not a physical sense: for the fraternity. I wonder if the fraternity will still be here,” he says. Worried patrons like Jones also should keep a bloodshot eye on the bartenders, Mulvey says. When bartenders start to look less comfortably rumpled and more downright unwashed and underpaid, the bar is more than likely in financial straits. A bar simply can’t bleed cash forever, Mulvey points out, so if it doesn’t close, owners will resort to all types of trendy, hipster-luring promotions.

A classic move, La Belle says, is hiring a bouncer to create a line outside of a bar’s door when only a handful of people are actually inside. Passersby assume the place is hot so it gets packed for real. The skin-deep make-over may not last, but it usually hangs in long enough for a bar owner to make a pretty profit, close the place and move on.

Conversely, rich bar owners can afford to nettle the poseurs until they either leave or get over themselves. Take T.K. Vodrey, owner of Tom Bergin’s Tavern, also known as the House of Irish Coffee, on Fairfax Avenue. His restaurant-bar has a long tradition of unpretentious sports fanaticism and no-nonsense whisky snarfing. Fancy drinks are mostly frowned upon. Merely asking what a Pimm’s cup is--supposedly a favorite among Britain’s sexy young nobility--can earn a patron a withering lecture on how to order a real drink.

“If someone comes in and asks for a mojito or one of those drinks, I tell them I can give them directions to Beverly Hills, where someone might make it for them,” bartender Michael O’Dwyer, 65, says.

O’Dwyer can afford to be snarky because Vodrey, 69, has earned a comfortable living in the past as a newspaper and magazine publisher. “I am not in there to make a lot of money,” Vodrey says. “I am here to keep the tavern what it was and is.”

Bar regulars in other parts of town may not fare so well in coming months, especially if Mulvey is right about another telltale sign of coming change: the aspiring actor. The logic goes thus: Would-be celebrities want to be seen by the right people, so they congregate in spots where looking overtakes drinking as the primary activity. Ergo, ambitious actors eager to be seen can be a sign that a bar is teetering on the edge of a vat of gloss.

Right now Mulvey’s money is on a restaurant and bar called the Silver Spoon on Santa Monica Boulevard, between Fairfax Avenue and La Cienega Boulevard as the next to collapse into popularity. The site is within spitting distance of an acting studio or two, Mulvey notes, and lately, he’s seen more young thespians at the Silver Spoon after rehearsals, plays or lessons, making the place ripe for rediscovery.

“[The actors] have been going there forever, but now, more and more are going in there,” Mulvey says. “I would think that somebody would come along and make an offer, get rid of the old-timers and make it a hip bar.”

But at least for now, the owner says, it’s not for sale.

Mulvey promises that all these hints are rock-solid. But sometimes, he says, a bar changes without warning.

Take the Coach and Horses on Sunset Boulevard. According to local lore, some time in the 1990s, a klatch of British ex-pats spotted the Union Jack flag on the bar’s awning, walked in and started downing pints. A young woman named April replaced the mean bartender and began serving apple martinis. “Who knows? It just kind of clicked ... and I was out of debt in a year,” owner Bob Grant says.

Inevitably, babes in black were sighted in low-slung pants, pouting, and the invasion was complete.