The New Stewards of The Silverlake Lounge Are Wishing it Well
Stevie Dreher and Luke Cheadle plan to bring the storied venue back to its glory days
Photographs by David Gurzhiev
Two years ago, Luke Cheadle, a music industry multi-hyphenate and former pro surfer, attended a gig at The Silverlake Lounge. It was a Friday night, and a friend of his was DJing. “I got here at 10, and there were, like, four people. I was like, ‘I can’t believe this. It’s in such a key spot on Sunset Boulevard, and there’s just no one around,’” he recalls, perched on a newly refurbished burnt orange booth inside the venue. “That’s when we started manifesting taking it over.”
“One of our partners lives 200 yards away, and we would always be walking by to The Thirsty Crow and verbatim, spoke it into existence: ‘Wouldn’t it be crazy if we could just own The Silverlake Lounge, and that could be the spot?’” adds Stevie Dreher, a former longtime talent manager in electronic music. He and Cheadle met in the early 2010s, shortly after moving to Los Angeles from San Diego and Sydney, Australia, respectively. At the time, Dreher was managing an electronic DJ and surfer who had toured with Cheadle, and they stayed close over the years through music, surfing, and nightlife. In the summer of 2022, they co-founded 2–3 FAIR, a multipurpose gallery space in Santa Monica, and at the beginning of 2023, Dreher opened El Chucho, a natural wine dive bar in Mar Vista.
Today, the pair are the new stewards of The Silverlake Lounge. After learning that the former owners were open to selling the storied bar, Dreher and Cheadle jumped on the opportunity. Earlier this year, alongside partners Michael Power, Dylan Johnson, and Ethan Jones, they took over the long-term lease and licenses of 2906 Sunset Boulevard, with its iconic bright yellow sign stretched over its maroon-painted, stone-walled facade. Keys in hand, they spent the next few months beautifying the interior—restoring the original terracotta floors, installing an all-new, top-quality sound system, and infusing it with an “Ed Ruscha California summer sunset colorway,” as Dreher puts it. Once the groundwork was laid, they took a major swing. On October 1st, the duo reopened the legendary venue. The goal? Restore it to its former glory.
Situated on the corner of Sunset and Silver Lake Boulevards—next door to the comparably historic Cafe Tropical—The Silverlake Lounge dates back to 1938 but established a reputation as a hotbed for up-and-coming punk, indie, and alternative bands more recently, in the early 2000s. “The Silversun Pickups got their name from the liquor store across the road because they were playing here all of the time. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club formed here. Tame Impala played their first [North American] show here. Brian Jonestown Massacre played a bunch of famous, notorious gigs here,” says Cheadle, rattling off lore. “So it’s got a lot of rich musical history that we want to make sure we’re honoring.”
Before that, from the late ‘70s through the early ‘90s, when the neighborhood was an LGBTQ hub, The Silverlake Lounge was a Latinx drag bar. The photographer Reynaldo Rivera’s book Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City is a powerful documentation of this time and includes photographs from inside the venue. As legend has it, Kurt Cobain used to party there in the ‘80s before founding Nirvana.
In recent years, The Silverlake Lounge has struggled to retain its notoriety, becoming known as a sleepy venue for nobody bands. In early 2020, Zach Negin (of Tabula Rasa Bar) and Steven Acosta (formerly Gracias Madre) bought the bar from Jesus Núñez, who owned it for over two decades. Like Dreher and Cheadle, they hoped to return it to its former fame. But when COVID hit mere weeks after they took the reins, their plans were halted. They closed, then pivoted to a pizza pop-up, and when the city began to reopen, they struggled to attract talent. “The people who booked [The Silverlake Lounge] before had really bad reputations, so nobody wanted to play there, and then when we did book stuff, it would cancel because someone would get COVID,” Negin says. Since he and Acosta were brand-new owners, they didn’t qualify for pandemic relief, and eventually, the financial situation became untenable. When Dreher and Cheadle made them an offer, they said yes.
On the booking front, Dreher and Cheadle are well-positioned to make a bigger splash than their predecessors. Their combined 30+ years of experience in the music industry amounts to a discerning sensibility for curating a vibe, not to mention a deep-seated network of musicians, promoters, and labels. Since opening, they've had the rapper Fat Tony on the decks, in addition to respected local DJs like Damon Eliza Palermo and Bianca Lexis. DJ programming is their bread and butter, both by the nature of their backgrounds and their drive to create a steady energy that builds like a great party throughout the night, especially on weekends. “We’re really trying to make sure that we have a high level of DJs in here that know what they’re doing and are not going to let their ego get ahead of the night as a whole,” says Cheadle.
During the week, the plan is to offer a diverse array of cultural programming, from live shows to poetry readings to brand-sponsored screenings of real-time sports games. “I want to do community theater. I want comedy nights. And not just because I want to make sure that we get butts in seats [because] we pay rent here,” says Dreher. “I want people to feel like they have that third place to come. They might not know what or who it is, but they know it will be good because it’s a Well Wishes establishment.”
If you’ve been to The Silverlake Lounge in the last few weeks, you’ve likely picked up on the fact that the new owners have instituted another umbrella name for the venue: Well Wishes. It’s in print at the top of the bar’s Instagram page and stamped on the bottom of the photo booth strips. While The Silverlake Lounge will always be known as such, some in the know are now calling it Well Wishes. The official name, in its entirety, is Well Wishes for Silverlake Lounge. For Dreher and Cheadle, “Well Wishes” signals a larger desire and grander scheme to save iconic spaces that are in jeopardy of getting turned into parking lots or generic mixed-use buildings, preserving culture in the process. “That’s kind of the big mission statement, with this being the first thing we tackled,” says Dreher. “These buildings and the communities that they’ve created and the stories that they’ve told need to continue to be passed on, not just updated into a fucking oblivion.” The reopening of The Silverlake Lounge is something of an inaugural pitch for Well Wishes, a team with aspirations that extend well beyond Silver Lake.
“These buildings and the communities that they’ve created and the stories that they’ve told need to continue to be passed on, not just updated into a fucking oblivion.”
From the outside, The Silverlake Lounge is unchanged. Inside, the Well Wishes overhaul includes significant aesthetic updates. “Let it be known, city, we didn’t change any of the building. We just [applied] a lot of lipstick,” says Dreher. “And a new dress,” adds Cheadle.
Nearly everything has been refurbished, from the walls to the ceilings, booths, back bar, and stage. The once gunked-up floors are now polished, 90-year-old terracotta. The curtain is no longer red but gold. The portal to the bathrooms has been Instagramified with wraparound mirrors accented by warm neon lights, while the green room now boasts a tiger print carpet. The DJ booth is brand-new and branded with a drunk skunk bathing in a martini glass—that’s Domino, the Well Wishes mascot, designed by local artist Paul Flores—as is all of the equipment, and the entire sound system, engineered by Cheadle to ensure that even when the music is loud, you can still have a conversation. Finally, a painted overhead sign to the right of the stage reads “Salvation” as a homage to the light-up sign that once hung over the heads of performing bands like Vampire Weekend and Beck. It’s now propped up by a rainbow in the style of Lucifer Rising (1972), a reference to the renowned experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who famously resided in Silver Lake.
Behind the bar, Will Kyle, formerly of Club Tee Gee and The Short Stop, runs point. He’s serving a couple of neighborhood specials, namely a proprietary espresso martini made in collaboration with Cafe Tropical and Bodega Park’s sparkling yuzu matcha spiked with gin. Otherwise, the offerings are that of a typical dive bar, slightly elevated. “You can get an amazing martini, an amazing Negroni, and an amazing Old Fashioned,” says Dreher. There’s also Guinness on draft, on account of the chocolate-y stout’s recent surge in popularity, and cans of Open Beer, a brand owned by big-name L.A.-based skaters. For those interested in stopping by for a nightcap, the bar stocks at least four amaros, including Averna and Dell'Etna.
In its current iteration, The Silverlake Lounge is a bar that sometimes turns into a venue. It’s also, intrinsically, a cultural site with historical relevance. Thus, as the new stewards, Dreher and Cheadle have a duty to assume the role of cultural shepherds. “When I first moved here, I was going to Cinespace every Tuesday night because that’s where I knew like-minded people would be that would teach me about new books or new bands or new performers,” says Dreher. “I don’t know if kids have that pang to go out every night and go meet new people to share ideas and culture anymore, which is maybe what, in a way, we’re trying to preserve as well.” While The Silverlake Lounge aims to be wholly accessible (i.e., cover-free each and every night), Dreher and Cheadle will need to exercise a bit of thoughtful gatekeeping to succeed in their new roles. Not just anyone can DJ, for example. “I DJ’d for nearly 10 years before I even dreamed of getting a gig,” says Cheadle. “I think people need to be way more considered and patient and take their time to develop craft across all disciplines.”
Right now, Well Wishes is the new hot spot that happens to be old. Harrison Patrick Smith, also known as The Dare, came in on the opening night and loved it so much that he returned a few days later. Reinstating the past prestige and perpetuating the legacy of The Silverlake Lounge, however, is a long game. Dreher and Cheadle want to bring iconic bands back to the stage, bet on up-and-coming musicians through residencies, and, ultimately, act as a bridge between the past and the future. “So many people have memories from here,” says Dreher. “I was at a festival with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking to Kim Deal from the Breeders. She asked me what I did, and I said I’m opening up The Silverlake Lounge. She was like, ‘I’ve played there like 20 times.’ And I was like, ‘Well, come back and play again.’” She said she’d love to, and the idea gave him chills. “With all of the work that the builders and Luke have done with the sound, when Kim comes back and plays in here, she’s gonna be psyched because it’s going to sound and feel probably better than it did in 2002,” he says. If the show materializes, it’d be akin to a home run for a franchise on a path to rebuild.
“Ideally, we get to the place where people always know to —” Dreher starts, then Cheadle chimes in. “Pop their head in for a drink.”
I started going there in the '90s, but its golden era was undeniably 1999-2007. After that, it was a ghost of its former self. For the record, Kurt Cobain never played there—his haunt was Raji's on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood back in the day.