my favorite local hang. we just moved up to Tujunga in November 2012 and from the first time we went in there we were treated like regulars. Â the staff knows my drink and my name. i know theirs. this place is not for everybody. not frat boy hipsters, princesses or intolerant people. yes, there might be some people who have had too much to drink and maybe you won't like a song on the jukebox but hey, it's a free country....go hang out someplace else...
Review Source:I previously liked this comfortable, social, local watering hole. I've lived in Tujunga all my life. My one problem with The Sundown is the service I received a month or so ago from a very unprofessional, spiteful employee that will probably cost the owner of The Sundown hundreds of dollars over the next year or so -- I was planning to support this local bar with my friends more. Now, none of us are going to go there.
I stopped by on a Saturday night at about 8:00pm. There were about 10 people hanging out, listening to music, playing pool...a local yet welcoming scene that makes places like this great. I went up to the (15 ft. long) bar to order a beer. The bartendress was about 28-32. Medium size. Oval face. Straight, long brown hair parted in the middle. Almond shaped brown eyes. Round cheeks. Has "perma-smirk" (not necessarily "perma-smile" where she's always smiling, but always looks like she's about to). As I was telling her what beer I wanted, she ran a couple fingers down the length of the left side of her hair & her eyes dilated for a second indicating attraction (I'm 40 years old, by now I know most female indicators, which also include the touching of the face, the "hair flip", the "pushing the hair behind the ear", the "running the fingers through the hair front-to-back", the "straightening of the blouse at the waistline", etc.., even the more obvious "adjusting of the blouse near the breast area" or the ultra-obvious "tongue tip on the side of the mouth"). I wasn't interested in this employee. I paid for my beer & took a place at the end of the bar.
What I'm saying is, I did not misinterpret the situation with this employee.
In a few minutes I was ready to order my second beer. The employee was talking with seemingly a regular or friend @ the other end of the bar, as she was leaning in with her elbows. She took another order, so I waited until she seemed done with that & was facing me to raise a hand to order the beer. She ignored me & went back to leaning on the bar talking. The couple sitting to my right facing her must've seen the whole thing. I chalked it up to a glitch in perception & waited a couple minutes until the next time she was facing me directly again. Again my hand went up after she seemed finished doing a task, with me calmly holding it higher this time. Totally ignored. The couple next to me definitely noticed, because they turned their heads a little to see how I would react. The employee then BLATANTLY turned her head to the left & asked the couple next to me how they were doing (i.e. "Need a refill?")! I was livid, but just kept my cool.
Apparently...
A) She perceives people who don't return her flirting as needing to be punished at the expense of her boss's income. Me nor any of my Tujunga friends will be back.
B) She doesn't clearly see that The Sundown isn't her apartment. It's a fucking business. You don't play petty, immature social games with would-have-been loyal patrons at work the same way you don't allow strangers into your living room from 5-7 every night for happy hour.
C) She takes her unprofessional, anti-social "service" on the road - she worked at the now closed "The Mix" in Montrose, where patrons standing at the bar waiting for service, including myself, were ignored because she apparently didn't want to walk the 12 feet to the other end of the bar, causing negative experience that always translates into lost revenue for the owner when people don't come back.
D) Apparently, patrons represent some type of power dynamic with this person & it's affecting both her tips and the income of companies. If she's not willing to simply do her job and attend customers, she is in the wrong line of work.
Undeniably...
A) She doesn't seem to care about the financial future of The Sundown enough to not keep her ego out of helping create one for it.
B) She needs to be reprimanded for essentially blocking money from The Sundown's owners till & fired if she doesn't significantly change her level of service with patrons.
I just got up, left the last quarter of my beer on the bar & left. Never to return again.
I understand that there are abusive patrons. I understand that food service is an industry where abusive patrons often try to socially dominate a server for their own sense of "primate power". I am not one of them and will never be. I just respectfully raised my hand for christ's sake. Twice! No bartender has to kiss a patron's ass if they're being rude, but a bartender who is not attentive to even taking patron's orders (i.e. going to them, not making them walk down the bar to you), has no one to blame but themselves that they don't work in a high-
volume, higher income job Downtown, in Hollywood, or even in Glendale or Pasadena. And a bar owner who keeps people on that recklessly drain their money is just inviting a financial catastrophe in time.
A great little divebar.
Bikers, old guys, old hags, random youths, ghetto from the hood, rockers WHATEVER. Â
Lots of fun people watching if you happen to go on an even just remotely busy night.
THEY DO accept credit cards. have a rockin' jukebox and a pool table.
Come on down and check 'er out!
Serving alcohol to minors, redneck bar fights, aging bikers and early bird drunkards are all a part of the lovely scene at this classy joint. A few gunshots grace the neighborhood from this haven of professional losers. It has been called everything from The Place to Armands and now The Sundown. I guess this place isn't as bad as the other bar on foothill which adorned swastikas all over the front door, so welcoming. Too bad Yelp doesn't have a negative 10 rating. Oh well.
Review Source:Yuck.  I am a dive-bar lover, but I guess there is a major distinction that needs to be drawn between your average cheap-drink-cash-only dive and  the local biker bar that does not go one night without being home to a bloody brawl.  Literally, no joke...I think almost every time I drive by this place there is a circular crowd formed outside the front door surrounding two misfits going at it.  The cops must be too scared to frequent the place themselves cuz you can still smoke inside the bar.  There will always be parking right in front of the place because everyone knows better than to park there and risk their car getting caught in the crossfire.  Most people park across the street in the grocery store parking lot.  It could be a full house, and you will always find parking right in front.
There is a pool table and two dart boards inside as well as a juke box, but the crowd is rough...really really rough. Last night for example, we ventured in there cuz it was the closest thing to my friend's house, and there was a pit bull in a Christmas outfit running around even behind the bar...and the highlight of the night was the chick-fight that took place between the bar regular (whose M.O. is "Stinky") and the tweaked out crack head that wanted to start shit with her. Â Not sure if I was more entertained or scared because no one seemed to care enough to stop the fight...people only wanted to join in. Â There was no mention of calling the cops....just bets being made on who would win it. Â Craziness....I will try my best to not ever step foot in this place again if I can help it. Â Twice was enough for me thanks.....
'The Sundown' is the literally the top of the heap of drinking establishments in Sunland running Easterly along Foothill Blvd, and Mt. Gleason avenue. This local hangout clearly advertises on the outside overhang visible from the traffic light in any direction that they quickly unlock the doors for your happy patronage at 6am. Slipping through the cold steel and glass at this hour will bring your nose in direct contact with the cigarette haze that still has yet to evaporate from the night before. Lots of indiscretions are taken and several municipal ordinances ignored. This place is the bar that time and the ABC forgot.
The Sundown is also a place to go where the take-out does not consist of food, and most people ride in on their hog. If you're even thinking of tooling up the Boulevard and parking your Metric Cruiser out back, forget it. After a few beers, you may come back to find it either gone or keyed. Such is life, and the elitist lower echelon bikers never said that they would suffer fools gladly, especially not young urbanites on their made-up Yamaha's covered in show-chrome. You know who you are.
The crowd is rough, but manageable. If you lack the grace and social skills to blend into this vegetable-beef-from-a-can kind of crowd, try Where Else or continue towards Pasadena. The Sundown is lucky enough to gain media coverage every handful of months due to the rowdiness of their patrons. The parking is limited and the bar is even more so, but somehow, someone managed to swing a pool table into this place. If you think you're going to shark-up in a place like this, think about doing something else. You'll end up getting more handed to you than just a pool game.
The wait-staff are reasonably nice, and again, pay cash for all your drinks. I found myself arguing over a two-hundred dollar charge recently after sitting at the bar for forty-five minutes. Yes, now you remember me. How fitting. If you get a chance to order a drink, do so, the drink handlers have a tendency to disappear out back to argue with their bearded, flannel-wearing boyfriends about god knows what.
The tension here is sometimes thick enough to cut through, but it's enjoyable and they have MGD coming out their eye-sockets. Sorry, nothing fancy kids. Just order a Caucasian (that's a White Russian for those scratching their heads) and be done with it.
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