Yankee Doodles
1410 3rd St.
Third Street Promenade
Santa Monica, CA
310-394-4632

Yankee Doodles is a wildly popular fixture on Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. The place is cavernous and an exercise in sensory overload with its deafening music, video screens and mirrored columns. No matter how good your break, no one will hear it.

It was '80s night (selections by Bon Jovi, Rick Springfield and the Stray Cats were the first three songs I heard, which made me think of old Joe Jost choking on hair spray) and more people were playing the bar's electronic trivia game than pool when I walked in, although the tables filled up after 11 p.m.

Doodles has locations in Woodland Hills and Long Beach as well. The staff is genial and the food is pretty good. "If you want to play pool, this is the place," a manager told me proudly.

Well, the tables are nice and the layout is smart (two floors and the tables are angled to give you good views of the bar, which is the length of a city bus), but places like Doodles are beholden to televised sports. There are a lot more conversations about the Minnesota Vikings than Minnesota Fats. Nothing wrong with that; it's just not pool purity.

A patron, 25-year-old Chris Ratliff, a recent transplant from the Bay Area, said the Yankee Doodles scene is great for socializing and has warmth that he didn't find in the sterner pool halls in Hollywood or San Francisco. "The music here, first of all, is great, and you meet people here. It's not just about drinking or playing pool."


Hours: Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-2 a.m.; Sat.-Sun., 9 a.m.-2 a.m.