Jones Hollywood, ‘a cross between the Rainbow and Dan Tana’s,’ celebrates 15 years

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Jones Hollywood, the bar at Santa Monica Boulevard and Formosa Street where you’ve probably spent at least a few (or maybe hundreds of) blurry nights, celebrates its 15th anniversary today.

From noon to 2 a.m., Jack Daniels, Herradura and Finlandia cocktails are $5; select beers and wines by the glass are $2 and $4, respectively; and 15 menu items such as pepperoni pizza and spaghetti and meatballs are $5.

Jones opened when owner Sean MacPherson was still operating the erstwhile Olive and ‘was kind of meant to be a cross between the Rainbow and Dan Tana’s,’ he says. ‘Kind of a rock ‘n’ roll pizza joint, sort of an homage to ‘real Hollywood,’ not the movie star Hollywood but people living in Hollywood and living that rock ‘n’ roll life.’

There are the black-and-white photos from the ‘70s and ‘80s collected by MacPherson (such as Janis Joplin drinking JD), the not-a-bad-seat-in-the-house booths, the big sound system, the quasi-Italian food (the current menu was created by John DeLucie of the Waverly Inn).

The key to its long-lived success? ‘It’s a comfortable place, a fun place, a lively place,’ says MacPherson, who also is behind Small’s, Swingers, Good Luck Bar, Bar Marmont, El Carmen, Bar Lubitsch and the Roger Room. (An aside: MacPherson now has plans to take over Orso restaurant on 3rd Street. ‘The running name is Ortho, in homage to nearby Cedars-Sinai, but it probably won’t be that,’ he says. ‘I hope it will have exceedingly good food and be somewhere I’d like to eat most nights when I’m in L.A. I don’t have that right now.’)

Jones ‘very much caters to the community, is really a part of Hollywood [in a larger sense because it’s actually in the city of West Hollywood] ... It was designed to last. Fundamentally, it’s the same place it was when it opened.’

Jones Hollywood, 7205 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 850-1726.

-- Betty Hallock