For those of you who partied in the 80s in Long Beach, there were a few key locations where you probably left some brain cells on the table. Barwinkles and Bogart’s in Marina Pacifica, the bars making up the 2nd Street Shuffle (such as Murphy’s, the Belmont Station and the A.I.), the really crude places like the Honey Bucket and the 49er Tavern, just to name a few. But the 80s also were known for dressing up and going to clubs. The most common of the clubs catering to the “see and be seen” hook-up crowd was the Red Onion but the “high class” name of the bunch was Bentley’s.
You know the place we’re talking about—it’s on the corner of PCH and Loynes and it used to have a large white car, a Bentley, inside that you could see through the window. If you were weren’t dressed up like Don Johnson, you didn’t really need to go to Bentley’s but it was, for its time, one of the places to be in the area for that kind of thing.
Bentley’s didn’t survive the cultural changes brought on first by those crap hairbands of the very late 80s and early 90s (e.g., Warrant, Poison, White Snake, etc.) and then the Nirvana/Starbucks driven grunge movement. Those changes torpedoed dressing up and dancing and drinking (at the very least) all night to Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. After Bentley’s closed, the location was dead for a while. It later became a place called, and we’re not joking, Live Bait which appeared to be kind of a rent-a-frat-party place that made even the Red Onion look classy. It was run down and sad and we don’t really know anyone who ever went there. It was most recently called “The Pier” but that just looked like Live Bait with a name change.
The location on PCH near Marina Pacifica is great, so it is amazing that it hasn’t been cleaned up sooner. Recently, someone finally tore down the fake fishing boat entrance (complete with a fake shark–don’t ask), put a new coat of paint on it and turned it into The Gaslamp Restaurant and Bar. (Click here to read a review from the Long Beach Press Telegram.)
We joined our friends Keith and Tara and a few of their friends for Tara’s birthday this last Saturday. Having deposited the children for overnight stays with relatives, we were free to enjoy some after-dinner entertainment and we thought we’d make our way over to the grand opening weekend of the Gaslamp.
Considering that we were sitting at a table in Bentley’s, we must have been overtaken by party-going ghosts of the 80s. While we waited for the entertainment to start, this group of 30-somethings out for a night of fun without kids immediately put in a drink order that would have made any 80s old-timer proud. Our waiter, Ryan (kind of a taller Billy Joe Armstrong that Wendy and Tara couldn’t stop talking about), took our order of shots, martinis, other cocktails and a coffee for Ralph. Most of our party, at one time or another, even took turns going out to the patio to smoke cloves!!! It really was like a trip back to the 80s minus the music, the clothes, the hair and, as far as I could tell, any illegal substances!
Which brings us to Phil Shane.
I’m not going to go into all the details about Phil Shane because he has his own website that you really owe it to yourself to check out. When we were first told about the plans for the evening, we were under the impression that we would be going to see a midget Elvis impersonator. Intrigued, yet horrified, we agreed. While not exactly a midget, Phil was barely tall enough to see over the railing behind which he was performing. However, once he started, he did not really stop for over 2 hours (and he was still going when we left). He is a one-man show with a Midi machine taller than he is and he covers the likes of Elvis, Neil Diamond and other well-worn cover tunes of the 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s rock (according to his web-site, his song list includes over 2,000 tunes) while making costume changes on stage and playing a little bit of guitar. He’s been on the cover of OC Weekly, snagging the #7 spot on that publication’s “Top 129 Bands in OC” in 2003! He has been playing lounge gigs since the 1970s and has developed quite a big following in Organge County. His success has taken him all the way to Vegas where he now has a regular lounge gig. If you are into cheesy Vegas-style lounge acts that are a lot of fun, do what you can to catch one of Phil’s shows.
The crowd was a really interesting mix of older people who looked like they would be board listening to Jazz at Spaghettini and a bunch of young fake-ID types who, while having fun, probably would not have been there had Green Day been in town. While not quite the train wreck of a people watching experience that you get at The Starting Gate across from the Los Alamitos race track, if you weren’t watching Phil bump and grind to an old Elvis or Neil Diamond song, there was plenty of other visual entertainment worth the price of a few drinks.
We had a great time and we highly suggest for those of you interested that you check out a Phil Shane show the next time he’s in town (or in Vegas if you find yourself there).
Happy Birthday Tara!