Our Favorite Back-Alley Bar In Koreatown

When introducing unsuspecting newcomers to Koreatown's Dwit Gol Mok, the key element is surprise.

What you do: gather up some friends and don't tell them where you're going. Just tell them to bring a Sharpie. And say "trust me." If your friends are like mine, they'll say "Fuck that, last time we trusted you, we wound up at a cowboy bar in Fullerton where that drunk Texan tried to force us to invest in bulls." And you tell them that was weeks ago and there is no reason to be bringing up the past, and that spending their life savings on a rodeo bull is a gambit that will eventually pay off. They finally relent.

You park your bull on Wilshire and walk north on Berendo. There'll be a gloomy parking lot on your right. Lead everyone through there. There will be a ramp leading up to a darkened alley portal. Go up that ramp. Ignore your friends' nervous whispers and the murmured accusations that "he's taking us somewhere to sell us into sex slavery." (That was ONE TIME, Mike.) Head through an archway, into a dimly lit courtyard. Walk through a doorway, past a kitchen, up a flight of stairs, and you are finally in...

...the greatest Korean dive-bar in Los Angeles. Think of an early 90's Tony Scott movie about Asian gangsters, imagine where a clandestine criminal meeting would take place, and you've basically got Dwit Gol Mok. The interior is a buzzing shantytown, full of sloped tin roofs, booths private enough to have sex in, the lighting a lurid scheme of blue-and-red-and-cigarette-smoke, and every inch of wall-space covered in Sharpie-scrawled graffiti.

There is soju to be sipped and Hite to be swilled, and sizzling sweet pork ribs to be nommed on. There's a seafood pancake that does right everything that fellow dive-bar legend OB Bear does wrong. The menus are blocks of wood etched with Korean writing. The whole place percolates with conspiracy and mischief.

Be sure to leave a Sharpie message on the wall. One for your friends. Perhaps: "I told you so."

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• WHAT: Dwit Gol Mok
  
• WHERE: 3275 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90010
• WHEN: 5 PM - 2 AM, Mon-Sat
  
• $$$: Typical K-Town bar prices
  

Drop Everything And Go Listen To This

Since when does IntrepidLA do album reviews? Since I'm-twenty-one-and-I-can-do-what-I-want, bitchez. Besides, if there was ever a moment for us to come out of the music-crit closet, it's when one of our favorite artists drops an album. 

Enter Pumpkin and his new six-track EP, Love Letters. As anyone who familiar with this site can tell you, we're fans of this guy. An LA-based producer with a fearless affection for the sweet, the weird, the sentimental, (he did a remix of The Muppets' "Mna Mna" for chrissakes), Pumpkin (née Nicholas Alvarado) swerves left where other producers swerve right, to thrilling results. 

With the rise of EDM, the mainstream dance world has become a scene that prizes maximilism above all else, with its 100,000-person festivals, its arms-race to create the most eye-frying visuals, its megastars straining to musically replicate the feeling of eating 100 Pixie Stix at once. But Pumpkin ain't playing that game; this guy is proudly rocking to his own drummer, honing his quirky skills in the kind of environments that don't demand constant four-on-the-floor mayhem (Shade, Lightning In A Bottle, Burning Man, Fuente Eterno.) In a world a obsessed with the 1 AM slot, Alvarado has perfected a sound that plays best at sunrise and sunset. And with Love Letters, he's just dropped the purest distillation of his style yet.

Letters consists of six homemade remixes, chopping up everything from FM-radio fodder (Florence And The Machine's "Dog Days Are Over"), to 70's kitsch (Melanie's "Brand New Key", AKA Rollergirl's theme in Boogie Nights), southern hip-hop (The Nappy Roots' "Good Day"), and indie stalwarts (Zee Avi, Lila Rose) with equal aplomb. On Pumpkin's Soundcloud page, his genre is dubbed as "lovehop" or "lovesauce", and these songs spell out exactly why that's a perfect moniker.

"Brand New Key" showcases his favored style of bouncy, snappy percussion -- think pill bottles rattling over warm pulses of subsonic bass; "Concrete Wall", with its plinking strings reminiscent of Aphex Twin's "Girl/Boy Song", is chill-your-spine lovely; "Good Day", featuring hip-hop artist EVeryman, strikes a jaunty groove, although it sometimes lyrically veers into "I just read 'The Four Agreements' and want to tell you all about it" territory. But the real stand out here is the blissed-up reworking of Noah And The Whale's "Five Years Time", a track that targets the pleasure-centers in your brain like a drone strike, driven by effervescent handclaps and a rollicking house beat that makes the original version sound flatly uninspired. This is dance music that manages the rare feat of simultaneously being shamelessly entertaining and genuinely soulful.

Most producers get post-set praise like "That kicked ass" or "You killed it up there." Pumpkin gets things like "I proposed to my girlfriend after your show." He's bringing something special to the party, and with Letters, the proof is in the lovesauce.

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• WHAT: Pumpkins six-track EP, "Love Letters"
  
• WHERE: Available online
• WHEN: Starting October 11th, 2012
  

Everything You Need To Know About Hell Fire and High Tea

We're not going to lie: IntrepidLA has a massive pants-party going on for steampunk. The genre combines so many things we love -- nerdy sci-fi stuff, an excuse to get dolled up in retro finery, an eclectic musical sensibility, an environment where it's socially acceptable to slap someone with a glove and then challenge them to a duel... what's not to adore?

In other words, we're going to be in absolute heaven this weekend, because the rabble-rousers of The Steampunk Saloon are bringing us Hellfire And High Tea. 

This Saturday the 21st, DJ Wolfie, Mark Zabala, Diggs, and Loomer (all four recently seen laying waste to the dance floor at A Night In Lord Danger's Harem, the greatest warehouse party ever thrown by someone named ME) are taking over a hidden oasis in the mountains of Alta Dena, just 20 minutes from downtown LA. Joining them on the decks are the likes of Jacques The Ripper, Mike Insane, and Shakti Bliss, bringing her dirty electro-swing to bear. There'll also be a freakshow by Freakshow Deluxe, a steamy burlesque performance by Hat Madder & Le Cirque Taboo, and more strange elixirs than you can shake a swizzle-stick at.

Bring along proper footwear for the terrain, and a bathing suit (or not?) for the pool-party that will be raging until noon Sunday. More details on the event's Facebook page.

Get your top hats/boots/corsets on and get up to the mountains for a night of anachronistic enchantment.

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• WHAT: The Steampunk Saloon Presents: Hell Fire and High Tea
  
• WHERE: TBA (RSVP to get the address)
• WHEN: Saturday, July 21st, from 5 PM - 6 AM
  
• $$$: $30 -- available here
  

Hipsters Beware!

Today, we are on the brink of a media event on par with the moon landing, the Watergate scandal, and that time Bill O'Reilly got trolled by a rapper on national television.

That's right... HIPSTER HOLOCAUST is going live!

The short film we intrepidLA writers lovingly crafted this past year (thanks to all your support in our Kickstarter campaign) is finally making its way to an internet near you. Watch it, share it, Tweet it, Tumble it, like it on Facebook, make sweet sensual love to it, promise you'll call it the next day, do whatever you want, we need all the support we can get.

We would never steer you wrong, dear reader; this movie is in the business of horrifying and delighting people, and cousin, business is boming. Prepare for a two-and-a-half minute blast of gore, laughs, and wish fulfillment.

Click here to check it out.

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• WHAT: HIPSTER HOLOCAUST goes live!
  
• WHERE: Our Youtube page 
• WHEN: From here to infirmary
  
• $$$: Free!
  

Believe The Hype: Bludso's Is The Best BBQ In LA

The best BBQ restaurant in LA isn't actually a restaurant. It's a cramped, broom closet-sized enclave in Compton that has a take-out window, a mocking joke of a "lunch counter", and a massive coal-black smoker in the back that acts as a sort of foodie Tesseract, opening spectral doors to let in flavors of the divine.

Bloggers have given themselves capral tunnel syndrome typing raves about the 'Q cooked up by southland native Kevin Bludso. Normally, I fancy myself an iconoclastic, go-against-the-grain contrarian (i.e. "In & N burgers are overrated and soggy!" "Fight Club was all about Chuck Palahniuk hating himself for being gay and is nowhere near as smart as it thinks it is!" "Bill Hicks was never actually that funny!") This time, however, I gotta run with the herd. Because the herd is going somewhere fucking delicious.

The basics: the char-ringed ribs are spectacular, the pulled pork is amongst the finest in town, and the sides -- collard greens stewed in a potent chicken broth, creamy-pungent potato salad, profoundly spicy baked beans -- are stellar. (Except the mac and cheese, which is stringy and underwhelming; but to be fair, I have yet to find a BBQ joint that does all sides equally well.) All that said, the brisket is where you'll find the real action.

First, a caveat: brisket is an astoundingly easy-to-fuck-up dish. Go to a place like Kansas City BBQ in North Hollywood and watch your dreams die in a puddle of overcooked brisket deluged in lukewarm sauce. Even the great Dr. Hogly Wogly's in Van Nuys can't seem to quite get the alchemy down right.

But at Bludso's, brisket is a matter of science, religion, and art. The beef comes out steaming, stacked in thick slices reminiscent of the pastrami cuts at Langer's, ringed with carbonized spice rub and marbled with little islands of juicy fat. Forget melting in your mouth; this stuff almost melts on your fork and sublimates into a rush of smoky umami the second you take a bite.The (sparingly used) spicy-sweet, homemade, tomato-and-molasses sauce lingers on your palate like the afterglow of a great first date. It's the kind of dish you want to invent time travel for, so you can experience eating it for the first time all over again. 

Your list of reasons to go to Compton just got longer.

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• WHAT:  Bludso's transcendent BBQ
• WHERE: 811 S Long Beach Blvd Compton CA
• WHEN: Open for lunch and dinner everyday but Monday
• $$$: Dishes start at $10