The Scene
It's not cold, but there's snow on the roof. You're a neat person but you're tossing peanut shells on the floor. The lounge singer should be crooning Wayne Newton but he's leading a "Bohemian Rhapsody" sing-along. Throw in some Christmas-light bedecked moose heads and Ruben-esque nudes making bedroom eyes at throngs of hungry people (some of whom wait two hours for a table on Saturday nights), and there's no doubt you're at the North Woods Inn. The San Gabriel branch of this L.A. institution is so wrong and yet so right. It's as close to a surreal Dudley Do-Right experience as anybody could want. Nowhere else can plaid-clad cocktail waitresses, taxidermy bears and mellow tributes to the Offspring coexist so peacefully.