The Word of 'Na: The Sky's the Limit at West

I might well have been floating on a raft, in an oversized martini glass, gazing up at the stars. But really, I sat on an ottoman at the West sky bar and lounge of the Angeleno Hotel. I was lounging and laughing with friends over cocktails, looking out at LA’s city lights. Seventeen floors down, the 405 raced back in a stream of red and forth in white. And 180 degrees of window-framed horizon wrapped its arms around us like a jeweled, velvet cape. Up in the sky, we felt tiny, insignificant, lost in a beauty as great as a Pacific coast midnight. But inside our bubble of leathery booths, marble tables, mirrored- and endlessly windowed- walls, we took comfort in a smooth Pinot Noir and a steady bass beat, like the rhythm of a heart. As the end of the night drew near, the DJ played slower hip hop and R&B hits.

My heart raced with the music when I first stepped foot inside West Lounge. The bar glowed in bottle green, blue curacao, framboise liquors, and green apple sours. Warm yellow light overhead in chandeliers danced in its crystals, in reflections in the mirrors, like dew drops on the bottles and glasses. Each with a glass of one well-balanced martini or other, my friends and I relaxed back into our seats and the scene. All around us, men and women seemed to float, the muscles in their faces relaxed, after 8 or 10 or 12 hour days at work. Business men and women, through with their deals, travelers through with their sightseeing, needing nothing else but this over-worldly view, and friends met here, at their getaway point, almost as if they’d pulled off their great con for the day and could now rest in their true bodies, their true selves. Young and older, but never old—after all, wasn’t this heaven?

Outside the main rush of LA nightlife—above it, really—West Lounge offers a peaceful oasis away from your usual, dried up and dusty routine. If you’re tired of music louder than the sound of your friends’ voices, or crowds so tight you can’t see the floor, take a fresh breath above the LA smog at the Angeleno Hotel. Monday nights you’ll find a live jazz band set up in the Southwest corner of the lounge, Tuesday nights you’ll pay half price on all bottles of wine, and every other night a DJ is featured to immerse the guests in the rhythm of the night.