On my way to work and on the return home I drive by good old Liquor Town on La Brea. It’s a stretch just off the 10 freeway along an odd, tangled and interesting thoroughfare sprinkled with other places such as Teddy’s, Garu’s, Century Liquor, Sunshine Liquor, and my personal favorite, Grand Prize. For whatever reason, whenever I drive by any liquor store, I’m always cataloguing the various liquor store names and how they came about. It’s a curious event. You get yourself the idea, “Hey, I’m going to open a liquor store.” I mean, it’s a good way to make money, people will always want booze. The only place I’ve ever seen go out of business was Jerry’s on Wilshire in Santa Monica. I went in there years ago to buy some Ango bitters and they didn’t have any and I wondered to myself how a liquor store could possible exist without having Ango. Maybe I willed them into closure but it was probably more like the BevMo opening a few blocks away that did it.

Anyway, liquor stores in LA have a sort of monochrome method of names according to neighborhood. In Santa Monica, it’s usually a person: Bill’s, Ed’s, Eddie’s. Michael’s whereas Venice area liquor stores are more colorful and imaginative: Trading Post, Day & Night, Lucky Stop. Culver City is less so–with uninspired names like Culver Liquor, Culver City Liquor and Wine, Martin Liquor, and AM Liquor (shout out to the day drinkers) but does sprinkle in some cool ones like Champion Liquor and one of my personal favorites, Happy Corner Liquor and Market. Yeah, that sounds fun.

Over here in Hancock Park, there are no liquor stores. Close by there, if I have a hankering there is Larchmont Village Wine and Spirits. Another super lame name. But the area is surrounded by spots if you head east toward Koreatown and hit Western. You could blindly throw a stone and hit a booze outlet. Yes, the old adage of poor neighborhood and more liquor stores, pawn shops, and check cashing places. I mean, who doesn’t want to pawn something and then take the money to buy alcohol? And if you’re going to buy a nice bottle, then why not take your business to Liquor Town? It sounds grand. A place, a swath of land like the big rock candy mountain of yore where liquor trickles from the vines and trees and there is a bar on every corner where you can purchase a well made Manhattan or old fashioned. Yes, here in Liquor Town we harken back to the days before the temperance movement when no one really knew what the hell was going on. Before annoying procedures like regulations took the fun out of everything. Yes, here in Liquor Town we encourage you to bring your guns, it’s a bit like the wild west days of tumbleweeds and outrageous, unregulated violence.

And so, of course you must be asking, “Ok, smart ass, what would you name a liquor store?” Glad you ask. The Aging Bartender’s Home of Fine Spirits and Debauchery? No, even though that is a fine name, it’s a little too long. I think I would name it after a writer, like they do with some bars. No, not Bukowski’s, that’s pretty overdone. How about after the title of a book? Make it more literary? Call it Gatsby’s or some shit and then have categories inside with the types of booze and the writers that favored them. Rum for Hemingway, Gin for Parker, Irish Whiskey for Joyce, Bourbon for Faulkner, etc.

Yeah, pretty lame post.