Colorado Bar is the last honest dive in Eagle Rock

There is a kind of bar that every neighborhood needs and almost none get to keep. Cheap well drinks. Cold draft beer. A pool table that has settled into its own geometry over the years, a jukebox that rewards patience, and a room full of people who live within walking distance. Colorado Bar, on Colorado Blvd in Eagle Rock, is that bar, and it has somehow survived every wave that took the others.

Nothing here is curated. The cocktails are no-frills and done honestly, the whiskey comes as a shot, and the lighting is the kind that makes everyone look like a regular. Bring cash. The crowd is Eagle Rock lifers and the newer arrivals smart enough to follow them, and by late evening the pool table has a list and the jukebox has a mood.

It opens at 1pm, which tells you something about its priorities, and it holds a 4.9 rating from the people who actually drink there, which tells you the rest. In a stretch of LA where every third bar has a concept, Colorado Bar's concept is being a bar. That is increasingly rare, and worth protecting with your patronage.

Go on a weeknight, put a quarter-stack on the rail, and order whatever is cold. You will understand within ten minutes.