[QUOTE=tovangar2;7970760]There's a very different bar described in this account:
"The absolute king of all small bars is also the bar where I was served my first drink. Although it no longer exists it was located in the Chinatown section of downtown Los Angeles. It was attached to a restaurant called Yee Mee Loo.
The bar was probably 25 feet long and no wider than a large automobile. It was long, narrow and dark as night any time of day. There were no windows and the ornately carved bar with Chinese motif was itself a work of art. It was the bar where time stood still. You might have noticed but it also had a clock with the numbers reversed that ran backwards so you never really knew what time it was."
-a vanishing world - the world's smallest bars
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Originally Posted by GatoVerde
Found this on ebay today:
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by tovangar2
Dunno if there were two bars or a remodel
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It's definitely confusing
t2.
Here's the other side of the matchbook you re-posted. (Cocktails in the Kwan Yin Temple)
tikiroom
"The correct spelling is Yee Mee Loo and the “lounge” area was known as “Kwan Yin Temple”.
The cocktail bar area was a dark dive-ish place we would frequent down in Chinatown back in the 80’s.
To my friends and I it was home of the mysterious “blue drink” I recall thinking they tasted really great.
They had an old antique Chinese style thing for the back bar (I assume this was the Temple in Kwan Yin?).
Everything behind the bar looked like it had started leaning in an earthquake and stopped,
we’d sit there transfixed looking at this portal to the orient, all the lamps, booze bottles and the setting before us."
tikiroom
-the first comment on the tiki blog mentions that one of the bar was in the basement. (could this be the bar in the polaroid from yesterday?)
I would like information on Yee Mei Loos in downtown LA, Chinatown to be exact.
It was a downstairs basement polynesian bar/chinese restaurant. They had the most intoxicating drinks,
I did alot of underage drinking there and was talking about it with my friend the other day.
The last time I was there was in the mid 80's. If anyone has been there please share details as mine are pretty fuzzy.
tikiroom
Here's some good news.
The Kwan Yin Temple's ornate bar was saved and ended up in Glendale. (but I'm not sure of the present location. several sources say it has moved)
Last but not least, here's a look at Yee Mee Loo in the 1940s.
LAPL
This is surely a repeat on NLA, but I wasn't able to locate it on the thread.
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