West Hollywood's Abbey :: Gets a New Look

The Abbey is an interesting phenomenon for Los Angeles and the larger LGBT community. Despite being over two decades old, local gays, lesbians and their friends, random A-list celebrities, and straight girls hunting for gay boyfriends keep coming back and filling up the place. One would think a bar this old is tired or worn out, but The Abbey still manages to host several rocking nighttime parties throughout the week, and has an extremely popular and busy patio on Saturdays and features the benchmark "Sunday Fundays."

After all this time, The Abbey still has dependably strong drinks, hunky bartenders, and still serves jumbo slices of kick-ass cake. So why mess with a good thing? We can be just as loyal to a long-standing bar establishment the same way we can blindly cheer on every project and proclamation released by a pop diva with an equally long career. Can't we?

But keeping the same look for an extended period of time works for only very select elite-a small group that includes anti-chameleon types like Karl Lagerfeld and Kermit the Frog. Any good promoter or bar owner knows you have to do everything from the superficial stuff like switching out a few go-go boys and colored light bulbs, to the more substantial knocking down of walls, to keep the boys coming back.

Some venues get a chance to rebuild after tragedy, like Micky's did when it was gutted by fire a few years ago. Others like the Faultline, the popular leather bar on the border of Silver Lake, shut their doors to the public for a month or two to focus on redesign.

Few like the Abbey are as huge and so well versed in remodeling that they are able to undergo a gradual renovation, re-doing a majority of the bar's interiors one room at a time, and still keep its doors open to the public.

It’s the Inside that Counts!

When asked why they made the decision to overhaul the behemoth bar now, the Abbey's founder David Cooley says "Everyone needs a facelift at 21," jokingly referring to the fact that the business has operating for 21 years. (I mean, I hope he was joking...otherwise according to Cooley's standards I'm wildly overdue and he may have been trying to suggest something to me not so subtly.) "With the amount of traffic we see here," Cooley continued, "and the wear and tear, we always have to do an update to every room every once a year. But now, a major [update] was needed. It just looks like a new bar and restaurant now."

For all this alleged "wear and tear," there hasn't appeared to be any obvious outcry for an update; The Abbey actually continues to rake in a range of accolades every year. The bar won Logo TV's award for "Best Gay Bar in the World" and Gay Cities' "Best Bar" award in 2009, and won the Logo award again the following year, along with AOL's City's Best award for "Best GLBT Nightlife" destination in LA. But perhaps changing before the public demands the change is part of the reason the business that's managed to survive and succeed for two decades.

While they may not be visible to someone walking by on Robertson Blvd, the Abbey's interiors have undergone many dramatic improvements. The Abbey's new look includes a sunken dance floor boxed in by VIP booths, an upgraded A/V system, new sleeker bars, and a larger kitchen space to accommodate the restaurant's new menu.

The Abbey’s Star Attraction!

Among his favorite improvements, Cooley says he likes that "from every bar you're at, you can see the DJ. We opened up all the walls so the flow is much better." The flow actually is a lot better. Before, there was sort of an odd easily choked circuit set up, and one major path to a back bar required one to awkwardly maneuver their way through a crowded dance floor. Now, the dance area and VIP booths seem more of a focal point and less of an afterthought.

This main area is surrounded by giant mirrors which helps add to the open feel, while also providing many more reflective surfaces for preening and posing patrons.

The dance floor and the front bar are all part of one giant room newly named the Elizabeth Taylor room, after the late Dame, the tireless AIDS activist and frequent guest at The Abbey. Her portrait hangs on the right wall, directly inside the bar's entrance, and she stands in the picture with arms up-stretched like a saint might appear, as if she were blessing the bar's patrons.

Pop diva Christina Aguilera and Cooley were honored for their "Contributions to Gay Culture". Their prints were pressed into cement squares to be later included in The Abbey's new Gay Walk of Fame, which will likely be installed on the outside patio at the entrance of the bar. Certainly, if she were still alive, Taylor would have been the first celebrity to kick-off this initiative, but since that opportunity is no longer available, Aguilera served as a glamorously suitable and playful substitute in the Dame's absence.

Another eye-catching aspect in this room is the new addition of stripper poles around the dance floor, an element that could be indicative of SBE's influence on the redesign, as similar poles popped up when the Nightlife Group remodeled the club Area on La Cienega and opened it as Industry,. While I won't suggest that stripper poles are the new must-have club component of the future, they do certainly allow for more colorful performances from the go-go crew.

The bathrooms have also been included in the venue's serious transformation. Not only are they bigger, but also now men and women can wash their hands alongside each other in a long communal sink surrounded by more giant mirrors. Finally, someone realizes that these handsome guys and gals love looking at themselves and each other, and that for the average LA gay, several mirror checks accompany each bathroom break.

The Abbey’s Star Attraction!

Among his favorite improvements, Cooley says he likes that "from every bar you're at, you can see the DJ. We opened up all the walls so the flow is much better." The flow actually is a lot better. Before, there was sort of an odd easily choked circuit set up, and one major path to a back bar required one to awkwardly maneuver their way through a crowded dance floor. Now, the dance area and VIP booths seem more of a focal point and less of an afterthought.

This main area is surrounded by giant mirrors which helps add to the open feel, while also providing many more reflective surfaces for preening and posing patrons.

The dance floor and the front bar are all part of one giant room newly named the Elizabeth Taylor room, after the late Dame, the tireless AIDS activist and frequent guest at The Abbey. Her portrait hangs on the right wall, directly inside the bar's entrance, and she stands in the picture with arms up-stretched like a saint might appear, as if she were blessing the bar's patrons.

Pop diva Christina Aguilera and Cooley were honored for their "Contributions to Gay Culture". Their prints were pressed into cement squares to be later included in The Abbey's new Gay Walk of Fame, which will likely be installed on the outside patio at the entrance of the bar. Certainly, if she were still alive, Taylor would have been the first celebrity to kick-off this initiative, but since that opportunity is no longer available, Aguilera served as a glamorously suitable and playful substitute in the Dame's absence.

Another eye-catching aspect in this room is the new addition of stripper poles around the dance floor, an element that could be indicative of SBE's influence on the redesign, as similar poles popped up when the Nightlife Group remodeled the club Area on La Cienega and opened it as Industry,. While I won't suggest that stripper poles are the new must-have club component of the future, they do certainly allow for more colorful performances from the go-go crew.

The bathrooms have also been included in the venue's serious transformation. Not only are they bigger, but also now men and women can wash their hands alongside each other in a long communal sink surrounded by more giant mirrors. Finally, someone realizes that these handsome guys and gals love looking at themselves and each other, and that for the average LA gay, several mirror checks accompany each bathroom break.

Serving Up More Then Men!

So many men...and menu items - so little time!

The Abbey's last major menu overhaul was in early 2007, when the menu shifted its focus to "modern American comfort food," featuring a lot of hearty classics and standards with slight healthy SoCal twists. However, this move did mean that the food didn't exactly jive with the standard set by the menus at other SBE properties, which include some of LA's most beloved restaurants like Michael Mina's XIV or Jos� Andr�s' The Bazaar at SBE's SLS Hotel.

As a result, the Abbey brought in Chef Danny Elmaleh, SBE's corporate chef and the man behind the menu of the hotspot restaurant Cleo at The Redbury hotel in Hollywood.

Calming any traditionalists who might be panicked, Cooley confirms that several of the old menu's cherished classics like the Warm Chicken Salad are still available, but have been tweaked slightly to make them a bit better.

Many dishes have received a sexy, signature SBE twist. Sliders are still available, but now you have the pork sliders from which to choose. The chicken quesadilla is still here, but now there's a short rib quesadilla option as well. The menu highlights a different traditional dish for each night of the week - Chicken Pot Pie on Wednesdays, Fish & Chips on Fridays, and Meatloaf on Sundays-but also offers selections like a Green Chili Turkey Burger, Short Rib Stout Braise entr�e, or the Graceland French Toast. The latter dish is topped with peanut butter, bananas and caramel, and available all day should an Elvis fan or breakfast-for-dinner type have a hankering for it.

Don't worry about your favorite drinks disappearing. Cooley says that there will always be new signature cocktails but the favorite and standard mojitos and martinis The Abbey is so well known for aren't going anywhere. When asked if he ever misses the simplicity of the days when the Abbey was just a cozy little coffee house, located just across the street, Cooley doesn't dwell on the past at all. "If it was a cozy coffee house I wouldn't exist right now," he says. "Starbucks would have eaten me up. You've always got to keep a step ahead of your competitor." Spoken like the man behind one of the best-known gay bars in the world, of course.