Jumbo’s Clown Room became a legendary bikini bar and cabaret, frequented by artists like Bukowski, Lynch, and Courtney Love.

Originally opened on June 27, 1970, by Jumbo as a neighborhood bar in East Hollywood, Jumbo’s Clown Room acquired its cabaret license in 1980, going on to become the most prominent bikini bar in Los Angeles. Becoming an incubator for dancers, burlesque stars, and performance artists of national and international reknown, the bar sometimes found famous folks on both sides of the bar and tip rail: Los Angeles poet laureate Charles Bukowski drank there in the bar’s early days; David Lynch wrote much of the script for “Blue Velvet” at the bar in the mid-1980s; Courtney Love danced there in the early 1990s; and it served as a second living room for Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead away from his primary one at the Rainbow.

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