Sunset Mixer at The Golden Bull

A Brief History

"Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, author Christopher Isherwood, and painter Don Bachardy walk into a bar. 

This isn’t a joke. It’s one bygone night in the mid-1960s when the four men went to Santa Monica’s Golden Bull for dinner. Details of what must have been one fantastic, martini-fueled party are lost to time, the conversation billowed away in clouds of cigarette smoke and clinking glasses."

“If those walls could talk,” says Don Cranford, who owned The Golden Bull from 1986 to 2017. “It was definitely the place to be those years, especially for the gay crowd. The restaurant was very mixed with lots of actors and writers and artists living here in the Canyon. It was never meant to be an exclusively gay restaurant or anything, but they sort of took over the bar. It was just their hangout. Families went in the dining room door, gay people went to the bar. Everyone loved it.”