Literary Los Angeles excursion number 4 was supposed to be at Musso & Franks. Unfortunately the organizer--that would be me--failed to check the website for their hours. So while everyone was solid for Easter Monday, Musso & Franks is not open on Mondays. Womp, Wah. Good thing this was a few weeks ahead, so I went with the next place on the list: The Frolic Room! Thank goodness that Laura, Sharon, Joe, and Gail were down with the switch. The Frolic Room was the regular haunt of writer Charles Bukowski in the 1970s, while he was cranking out some of his seminal works, "Post Office", and "Mockingbird Wish Me Luck". It started out as a Prohibition-era speakeasy in the 1930s. Once Prohibition was repealed, it became a legit bar. In the 1940s, along with the Pantages Theater next door, it was owned by Howard Hughes until 1954. Many stars bellyed up to the bar, including Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. It is also infamous for being the last place Elizabeth Short ("The Black Dahlia") was seen alive before her gruesome murder in 1947. While every bar in Los Angeles and the surrounding environs seems to be turning into a Gastropub (Lord, spare us from hipsters), the Frolic Room has maintained its divy vibe, and the five of us were happy to drink it in over Coke, Gin and Tonic, Bloody Mary, and a Martini, while trying to name all the golden-age celebrities in the Al Hirschfeld mural that lines the wall across from the bar. #literarylosangeles #writerlife #writerhaunts #frolicroom #divebars #lastofadyingera (at Frolic Room) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwnUGgtF062/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1cofm2a5evbdt