21-05-2025
Places to go West hollywood
Barney's Beanery is a modest-looking shack, with a gaudy striped awning, that has sat on humming Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles for almost a century. And its unique placement on the famous Route 66 means it came up with an equally singular way for its luckless customers to pay for a bowl of its famous chilli back in the day.
'The road outside the Beanery is Santa Monica Boulevard, but it also used to be the end of Route 66, before the highway went all the way down to the Santa Monica Pier,' says Jon D'Amico, owner and tour guide of Sunset Strip Rock 'N' Walk Tours.
Once the end point of Route 66, Barney's Beanery is on Santa Monica Boulevard. Credit: Julie Ansiau
'Remember, 100 years ago, the people who were coming to California were getting away from the Great Depression, or the Dust Bowl, and they wanted to start their life over. They were destitute, so Barney said: 'I know you're broke but here's the deal. I will feed you a bowl of my chilli, and you can give me your front car licence plate as collateral'. And to this day, the bar is covered in the licence plates of the people who did not get their collateral back.'
Now, when you open the door to Barney's Beanery, and your eyes adjust to the dim light, you will see hundreds of car plates, shiny, scratched, dinged up. They cover the roof, interlaced with fairy lights sitting above muted televisions that never stop showing sport. Multicoloured booths run from the door down to the pool tables at the back, and rock 'n' roll plays just loud enough to shout over. Steaming bowls of the venerable chilli still come out of the kitchen with numbing regularity.
The original Barney's Beanery was opened in Berkeley, California by John 'Barney' Anthony in 1920 but a few years later the diner burnt down. Barney moved his chilli house to the current building on State Route 2, also known as Route 66, in 1927 and the place had a reputation. Falling just out of the jurisdiction of the LAPD, what we now know as West Hollywood was home to speakeasies and other ne'er-do-well establishments during the Roaring Twenties. This lawlessness was the basis for how the Sunset Strip got its party reputation right up to its hair-metal heyday in the 1980s.
Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles. Credit: Getty Images
Each of those number plates hanging over your head has a story, but they just scratch the surface of the tales that the Beanery has been associated with.
'I start and end my tours at Barney's Beanery for a reason,' says D'Amico. 'There is a lot of music history here and some of it is literally written on the walls and on the ceiling.
'And it is still a hotbed of music activity; it has recently seen everyone from Taylor Swift to Slash here, and it remains an iconic spot in LA.'
