Inside: The Happy Ending

(Credit: Shane Redsar)

Look left: a guy passed out, half-finished beer in hand. Look right: your booty-shorts-jumpsuit-wearing waitress, doing the Cabbage Patch with a rowdy group of drinkers.

Look down: the biggest mixed drink you’ve ever seen, served in a brightly-colored sand pail.

Welcome to The Happy Ending, the new Hollywood bar that thinks it's a college frat party, and has the so-potent-it-hurts drinks to prove it. This bar might not offer the same ‘happy ending’ as the Thai Massage parlors that pepper Sunset Boulevard (and half the Valley), but with drink specials with names like "Red Headed Sluts" and "$3 Blow Job" specials, as well as waitresses in Barbarella-meets–Austin Powers, crayon-red jumpsuits, it ain’t doing much to blur the line between raunchy and really raunchy.

The Happy Ending is housed in a former Acapulco restaurant and its roots are still showing, from the restaurant layout to the faux exposed brick that screams “I used to be a cheesy Mexican chain.” Now a zillion flat-screen TVs blast ESPN, while a rotating roster of DJs spin danceable classics new and old—from Michael Jackson to Gwen—with the attention span of a 4-year-old.

The large menu, comprised of comfort foods and Italian classics divided into Happy ‘Tizers, Happy Medium and Happy Large, is surprisingly... decent. And if you’re just looking for something to munch on while drinking, there’s always a free cart of super-salty popcorn. Several booths also have neato touch-screen menus that make ordering as much fun as dialing up Feist's "1,2,3,4" on your iPod Touch (on second thought, maybe we've heard that song one too many times already...).

But the undisputed centerpiece of the bar is the "Wheel of Drinks," a large, colorful disc with a variety of drink specials that’s spun every couple of hours nightly (and every 20 minutes on Wednesdays). Yes, The Happy Ending is home of the "$3 Blow Job" (it's a drink, folks!), but this is the kind of bar where the early-20s set comes to do Jaeger shots and grind on one another to Akon. There are also futuristic-looking beer towers with insulated ice cores in the center, which make the last swallow as ice-cold as the first, and advertised as being the equivalent of seven beers.

We opted for The Moan and Groan, one of several drinks offered in sand pails, shovel and all, which tasted overwhelmingly of pineapple and orange juice masking undergrad-grade booze. Still, drinking from a sand pail with a half-dozen multicolored straws is fun, not to mention economical—a bucket of booze will only run you $15, the price of a single mixed drink at Hollywood bars like Social Hollywood or S Bar.

Couples making out, that guy passed out with his date, a woman about to throw up—they’re all here. But mostly it’s locals looking for a good time, strong drinks and zero Hollywood pretense. This bar might not offer a true happy ending, but it’s undeniably a Hollywood ending.

Crowd: You know those bars the cast of "The Real World" (pick a season) goes to every night to get wasted and hook up with anyone with a pulse and a lame tattoo? This is that bar.

Parking: Valet is a relatively cheap $4.25 (our tip: save the quarters for the jukebox inside).

Insider tip: For those who have watched "Cocktail" one too many times: Thursday is Celebrity Bartender Night, which gives average joes and janes the opportunity to step behind the bar and serve up $3 shots.

Click here for The Happy Ending's address, phone number and website.

Amir Kenan is a contributing editor for Metromix Los Angeles.

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