San Diego Reader

• Bar/Club
• Restaurant

Whaling Bar & Grill

• 1132 Prospect Street, San Diego, CA 92037 | Directions
• 858-551-3761
• http://www.lavalencia.com/dining/whaling-bar-grill.php

If only the walls of this clubby, woody, red-leathery bar could talk. La Jolla's most famous literary watering hole has boasted an eye-popping list of regulars: Gregory Peck, Mel Ferrer, Dr. Seuss himself (Theodor Geisel), Art Buchwald, Picasso's lover Françoise Gilot (now the widow of Jonas Salk), and maybe the best-known regular of his time, Raymond Chandler (English-raised creator of the Philip Marlowe detective novels such as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye). There's something about La Jolla that attracts the celestials as they come down to earth. You might catch one, say Gilot, 85, if she's not in Paris or New York with daughter Paloma Picasso. (Best night, budgetwise, is Thursday, happy hour. Seven-dollar martinis but free filet mignon sandwiches.) Chandler, of course, is long gone. He was a confirmed alcoholic but also a damned fascinating conversationalist, as complex as Marlowe himself. The one no-no was to bring up Alfred Hitchcock, whom he hated with a passion. Lean on the same bar, drink the same martinis, think the same noir thoughts. Quote his great noir lines such as, from The Simple Art of Murder, "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean...."