The atmosphere in Los Angeles tonight is terrible. So much so that driving across town to the Sunset Strip during rush hour on election eve doesn’t seem like the worst idea. Los Angeles has a reputation for being a political bubble most of the time, but I wondered if the tense nature of this particular election would break that perception. So I headed to the Tower Bar, a watering hole inside the Sunset Tower Hotel that is a Wheeler favorite. -dealers in one of the most visible places in the city.

The hotel’s dark, sexy bar is usually crowded, but tonight it’s relatively quiet, with a few tables here and there crowded with couples and friends clinking glasses of pinot noir over fries. But around 6 p.m. PT, when most polls were closed on the East Coast and the election began to heat up in earnest, no one was checking their phones except to shine their flashlights to examine closer to the menu items. It turns out that the Old Hollywood bar – a favorite of kingmakers and celebrity watchers, located on the ground floor of a building where gangster Bugsy Siegel once had a base – feels eerily l Feels like I’m there any other night, even in your midst. know, the inevitable. Bartenders mix martinis and debate whether the new Gladiator the sequel will hold a candle to the original. As the nighttime pianist and double bass players play their respective instruments in the lounge bar, it feels like the Titanic is gradually plunging into subzero temperatures as the band continues to play improbably.

Across the street at tourist haunt Saddle Ranch Chop House, things aren’t much better: the few people riding the resident mechanical bull do so as if they’re more out of obligation, not so much out of obligation. of joy. But that’s consistent with what I see in most of the people I meet on the Strip tonight, many of whom seem to disassociate themselves with a generous shrug. A few people I chat with at the Tower Bar are Europeans who are vacationing here during this consequential, dystopian week, including an affable German who is here for the express purpose of riding his Harley-Davidson helicopter on the Pacific Coast Highway. At least the United States of America still has some semblance of promise for someone.

Read all of our election night dispatches here.