The Lodge (North Hollywood Gay Bar/1977-2006)

The Lodge — North Hollywood Gay Bar Tee

At 4923 Lankershim Boulevard, The Lodge was a longtime North Hollywood gay bar and one of the places that made the San Fernando Valley’s queer nightlife its own world, separate from the better-known bars of West Hollywood.

The address had been part of gay nightlife since at least the late 1970s, when period guides described The Lodge as a cruisy neighborhood bar. Over the years it evolved with its crowd, becoming a popular spot for drinking, dancing, DJs, and late-night hookups.

By the 1990s and 2000s, The Lodge was particularly known for its Black and Latino gay crowd, with nights featuring hip-hop, house, Latin music, and club classics. It was friendly, a little sleazy, and refreshingly removed from the increasingly polished world of West Hollywood nightlife.

And if the room looks strangely familiar, there’s a reason. The Lodge appears in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992). It’s the bar where Mr. Orange tells the other guys his elaborate story about encountering cops in a bathroom while carrying a bag of marijuana. Tarantino simply used the real North Hollywood gay bar as his location.

That gives The Lodge the wonderfully unusual distinction of being both a piece of Los Angeles LGBTQ+ nightlife history and movie history—even if most people watching Reservoir Dogs had absolutely no idea where those guys were sitting.

The Lodge eventually closed, ending another chapter in the surprisingly rich history of gay bars along Lankershim and Burbank Boulevards.