Drunk After Work: V Room



The Place: V Room, 918 E 4th St, Long Beach; (562) 437-4396.



The Hours:
6:00 AM – 2:00 AM, seven days a week



The Deal:
4:00 – 7:00, Monday through Friday, everything is a dollar off, bringing beers down to  $2 for domestic brews, $3 for imports.

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The Scene: With velvet paintings, carpeted walls and dim lighting from 6:00 AM to 2:00 AM–those being this bar's hours, and the only acceptable hours for a true dive bar–V Room is a true whole-in-the-wall, and ideal spot for drinkers low on snobbery and high on, well, want for booze. Patrons skew towards the punk and rockabilly in terms of style–tattoos abound on both sides of the bar–but don't be surprised to see septuagenarians sipping a tipple at even the oddest of hours. And as is the case with the just about every jukebox found in a 4th Street drinking establishment, the selection of music is stellar, giving The Pike stiff competition for best tunes on Retro Row.



The Sauce:
Decidedly not a liquor snob's paradise, V Room features precisely zero beers on tap–strictly bottles and cans–with a fairly low top shelf and heavy-handed bartenders. And that buck off during happy hour can be well spent matching your skills with a pool cue against the sharks that often troll the back room's pool tables, or on the aforementioned jukebox. PBR seems to be the beer of choice, but you probably already guessed that.



The Eats: Corn nuts. It's a dive bar, after all.
 
The Verdict: In days when a whole-in-the-wall bar may sport a mixologist or two stirring together hand-crafted cocktails accented with dashes of house-made bitters, the no non-sense, no-frills attitude of V Room is a reminder of why nearly everyone loves a cheap, blurry, booze-soaked night afternoon at a dive bar.    



The Grade: B+, because, as a food blog, we're kind of snobs by default.

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