Fireside Chats

Maybe cellular fatigue is finally striking. Across L.A.’s club land, the Country Bear Jamboree look is drawing hipsters who used to go for sleek and synthetic rave-inspired settings. Eastsiders flock to Atwater Village’s 5-month-old Bigfoot Lodge, a bar-cum-log cabin with its own Smokey the Bear, a sign reading, “Welcome to Sasquatch National Forest” and a gigantic flagstone fireplace, where patrons presumably swap rural myths. Meanwhile, on the bustling Sunset Strip, club promoter Brent Bolthouse has created a patch of the frontier with his recently opened Coffee House. Couples can snuggle into comfy sofas while sipping mulled cider beneath vaulted dark wood ceilings in “grandma’s house,” as Bolthouse describes it. “I wanted to build a cozy place that looked as if it had been here for 100 years,” he says.