When I first moved to LA, I had one very specific goal: I wanted to become a regular.
I didn’t know where, but I knew I wanted it to happen. I had just ended an eight-year relationship and moved from San Francisco to LA with literally nothing but a broken heart, one friend (who was pregnant), and boxes and boxes and boxes of clothes. I’d spent basically my entire 20s in a relationship, and somewhere along the way, I’d also stopped going out, stopped seeing a lot of my friends, and generally stopped being a very fun person. I was ready to get out of my house and into the world.
Not long after I moved, I met two girls who would go on to become two great friends, and we started going to Gran Blanco in Venice every Friday night.
In the beginning, Gran Blanco could not have cared less bout us. We had 90-minute reservations, and when those 90 minutes were up, they were up. We would try to linger and immediately get ushered out to make room for the next table.
But we kept coming back.
Friday after Friday, we got to know the bartenders, the servers, the bouncer, the manager. Eventually, Friday nights became “GB Fridays.” We had a standing 9 p.m. reservation at table four, objectively the best table in the place. The staff kept a box of our games in the back room — Catch phrase, decks of cards, Operation — and would bring it out when we arrived. We never waited in line. Friends knew where we’d be every Friday, so there was a revolving door of people stopping by our table throughout the night.
I cannot overstate how cool this made me feel.
Was I actually cool? Debatable. Did walking past a line wrapped around the block because I knew the bouncer make me feel like the most important woman in Los Angeles? Unfortunately, yes. I feel like a loser even typing that sentence, but I have truly never felt cooler than I did during my year as a Gran Blanco regular.
But GB Fridays became sacred. You didn’t miss one. There could be other plans, other parties, other things going on — but at 9 p.m. on Friday, we were at table four. And it was quite literally the time of my life.
For one year, I went out, I met strangers, I stayed out too late. I was ridiculous. I had fun. And every Friday night, I knew exactly where I belonged. So maybe my fixation isn’t actually being a regular — it’s finding a place that feels a little bit like yours.
Double Dog Dare: Pick a place you genuinely love and become a regular. A bar, a workout class, a coffee shop, a neighborhood restaurant — whatever. Go often enough to learn someone’s name. Let them learn yours. There’s something surprisingly nice about having somewhere in the world where people notice when you walk through the door.
