EVENT – Avast! It’s Thursday Night Cocktails!!!

**OFFICIAL FACEBOOK EVENT LISTING**
(Please RSVP there if you can so we know what to expect.)

WHEN: Thursday, February 25, 2010, 7:30-9:30pm
WHERE: HMS Bounty, 3357 Wilshire Blvd. (213) 385-7275

This week our HiddenLA soiree will be held at the ever-so-nautically-themed HMS Bounty on Wilshire! Ramon has been at the Bounty for over 40 years and especially in this crazy economy he’s looking very forward to our visit… so let’s be on our best behavior and PACK the joint! Where else in town can you sip cheap cocktails and munch on fried food while lounging in red leather booths bearing the names of impressive regulars from a long ago era… customers like Winston Churchill, William Randolph Hearst and Jack Webb? Nowhere else, that’s where!

Parking and historical information about the HMS Bounty after the jump.

PARKING: I tend to park on the street, although you might have to walk a bit if it fills up. The lot on the corner at the Brown Derby Plaza on the corner of Wilshire and Alexandria – $5.00 with no validation, I believe it’s $2.00 with validation from the restaurant.

HISTORY: In 1921, Gaylord Wilshire built the 14-story Apartment Hotel (now the Gaylord Apartments) facing the Ambassador Hotel. The neighborhood soon filled up with elegant New York-style apartment buildings and became home to many film stars of the early 20th Century. In 1926, Gloria Swanson’s husband (Herbert Somborn) opened the world famous Brown Derby Restaurant, a hat-shaped building, at the end of the block. The hat now sits fossilized on the third floor of the strip mall next door, but the HMS Bounty lives on virtually unchanged… worn brass plaques still adorn booths in the back dining room, waiting for the likes of notable regulars like Jack Webb and William Randolph Hearst to return.
From LATimeMachines.com:

The Bounty started out as “the Gay Room” (Gay was H. Gaylord Wilshire’s nickname – long before the word took on another connotation). It appears the Gay Room opened in 1948 with music and dancing (an early act featured Carol Mitchum, Robert Mitchum’s sister). It was advertised as a place with a high movie star quotient. It later did a stint as Jane (nee Hoffman) Assell’s Gaylord Dining Room (approx. 1950 -1953). Then it became Dimsdale’s Secret Harbor (possibly in 1954), and then briefly it was known as the Golden Anchor in 1962. When it became the HMS Bounty, the first owners were Richard O’Neill (descendent of one of California’s most famous pioneering families and still co-owner) Ron Waller (of football fame) and Gordon Fields.