The Cinebar is fairly easy to miss. Located on 69 E. San Fernando, the Cinebar‘s entrance is a bland, nondescript wooden door, the kind one passes on the street without giving any thought. Sandwiched against the flashier Azucar—with its bright lights, blaring music and floor-to-ceiling windows—this door looks like the staff exit of the adjacent restaurant, rather than the main portal to a pub.
Hidden behind this ordinary door, though, is an extraordinary bar—one so stereotypically dive, that any person who has never seen a dive bar can walk in and recognize it as such. The joint has a run-down sort of feel to it (essential to any dive bar), with the wood fixtures worn from years of use. The floor is scuffed, the corners of individual floorboards chipped, while the wood-panel walls are scratched and gouged, the white paint flaked from the walls.
The bar is fully stocked with popular brands of alcohol, shelves of rums and vodkas and whiskeys running ceiling to floor the length of the counter. Flanking the bar is a row of leather chairs and wood tables. Affixed to the wall is a line of lanterns, the soft red light easy on the eyes. In the back, sits a jukebox, blaring rock tunes, and propped too close to the wall is the ubiquitous pool table, the felt stained with spilt beer. Rounding out the dive-y feel is a lone disco ball, hanging from the ceiling.
It could be a movie set on some Hollywood studio’s back lot, were it not for the artwork adorning the walls: stencils of Hollywood heavyweights like Marilyn Monroe, Herman Munster and the Three Stooges—the “Cine” in Cinebar. With its gimmicky artwork, the Cinebar could easily be a bar in Hollywood, a watering hole across the street from Paramount, where extras and crew mingle after a day’s shoot, were it not for the fact that the bar is located in San Jose.
The bar is often standing-room only. Patrons are typically of the alternative crowd, so after the workday ends, tattooed forearms, pierced noses and flannel shirts fill the stools. Many customers hail from the alt. crowd, but they do not have a monopoly on the bar. Anyone is welcome. Frequently, men in dress slacks and women in little black dresses sit alongside the band shirts and the blue-streaked hair. All are united in their common desire for a stiff drink and their belief that a night of drinking shouldn’t eat up a week’s paycheck. The bar offers $2 pints of PBR—all the time—and $5 shots, so it’s the place to drink on a budget—a welcome location for those in today’s economy.
Check out more photos of Cinebar in the MetroActive photo gallery.
Bar Fly is a new Metro column exploring Silicon Valley bars and clubs.
.Bar Fly: Rubbing Elbows with Hollywood Legends and Locals at Cinebar
