El Griffin. (that's Spanish for "The Griffin")

The Griffin should be my favorite bar. It is medieval themed, and I love medieval shit. I even have a useless degree in Medieval European History, the product of four years of dorking out on Latin, dense books, church documents and footnotes, while all my friends got to watch ass loads of movies and make up their own words.

BUT, the Griffin actually kinda sucks. Read on..

Item 1: They turned me away for wearing shorts at 8:02 on a Tuesday in July because "sorry bro, no shorts on dudes allowed after 8pm." Regardless of how your feel about shorts in general, it was summer, it was hotter than Satan's grundle, and they turned down a potential paying customer. Some happy horseshit indeed.

Item 2: Most of the bars full-length-pant-wearing patrons are an awkward combination of Glendale chads and eastside hipsters whose self importance could not contained in the more modestly sized watering holes of Echo Park and headed out to the pseudo-'burb of Atwater for some more room. While its not my place to judge, it is definitely not my scene. Especially with Bigfoot down the road, where the Rocka/Horror/Psycho billy crowd seems to be taking back the joint from the Hollywood overflow. Ratrods? Check. Custom cafe racers? Check. It's like 2006 all over again...

My point? We went there (wearing pants of course) and not only got in, got to the bar unharassed by horny douchebags (that happened there once too) and ordered, but actually scored two stools, where we had unlimited access to bartending service and people watching. Then we discovered their special on Eel River Porter, which in addition to beings 3 bucks, tasty and certified organic, is not a non-achoholic beer. Some things are not too good to be true. And just as we started to entertain the idea that the Griffin doesn't suck, the clock struck midnight and Olympia went on sale for a dollar. A good time ensued.

The score still stands stacked pretty steeply against the joint, but I felt in the interest of fairness I should share our little success story. Now if anyone can find something nice to say about The Brass Monkey, I would like to hear it...

-OSB