Nightlife in Inglewood

Behind its brick storefront, The Crush Bistro & Wine Bar presents visitors with the opportunity to sample wine from around the world. Pendant lights throw their glow across a towering case filled with stacks of wine and miniature ships waiting to dock in an empty bottle. However, rather than having bartenders manage the sizable stock, 16 self-serve dispensers pour tastes and glasses of reds and whites, letting visitors sample several options to pair with the tapas menu. Small plates create landing sites for smoked Norwegian-salmon crostini and beef-short-rib sandwiches, and the bistro's chefs also cook veggie options such as Asian-style summer rolls that wrap marinated tofu with lettuce and cabbage.

At the Hollywood Improv, comics lure laughs from deep within bellies as they follow in the footsteps of standup legends such as Ellen DeGeneres, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, and Dave Chappelle, all of whom have graced the Improv club stages. The club's calendar schedules comedians as often as seven nights a week, alternating between big-name headliners and up-and-coming funsters who tickle funny bones with fresh material, abundant energy, and feathered reflex hammers.

What’s now known as The Comedy Store was once called Ciro's, a nightlife hotspot in the 1940s and '50s. Playing host to glitzy stars and shadowy mobsters, the club's history is shrouded in rumors of mafia assassinations and untimely deaths. However, the joint buried its seedy past by converting to a comedy club and helping launch the careers of such legends as Richard Pryor, Jim Carrey, George Carlin, David Letterman, and Dave Chappelle. The younger La Jolla location lets laugh-starved patrons bask in the same high-powered comedic atmosphere as its progenitor.

Trees play an important role at Bar Food. They've given their wood for the knotty rafters that support the ceiling, the cubbyholes that make up the bar's Wall of Taps, and the barrels that aged the gastropub's collection of more than 200 whiskeys. You'd expect wood to frame the colorful paintings of music icons that gaze down on the whiskey list with immovable looks of envy, but they hang frameless.

Like a 19th-century dockworker's shopping list, the menu promises hearty traditional public-house fare—fries, cheese plates, sandwiches, shepherd's pie, beef stew, and fish and chips. Guests sup on these and other dishes at cozy wall-length booths or out on the streetside patio. Four and 20 taps keep beer glasses full and diners happily cheering for every chicken that dares to cross Wilshire Boulevard.

The Duke City Improv Festival welcomes 13 comedy acts, from local performers to visiting teams from Chicago, Phoenix, and Oklahoma. Support The Gryffindorks, Albuquerque's longest-running improv team, or indulge sadistic funny bones with Stretchin' It, an adult-oriented troupe from Oklahoma City that employs media and song to entertain and offend in equal measure. Three different groups from Phoenix battle for back-home bragging rights and to determine who will perform at halftime of the next Super Bowl, and the local laugh-lobbers from No Holds Bard improvise their way through "forgotten" Shakespearean texts. Frosty brews from the nearby Tractor Brewing Company grease gullets on Saturday nights, and a slate of improv-enhancing workshops are available for an additional $15 each.

Founded by comedian Sammy Shore in 1972 and built into a comic empire by his erstwhile wife Mitzi, The Comedy Store has nourished some of the country's greatest comedic talent. With an alumni list that includes such greats as George Carlin, Jim Carrey, and Dave Chappelle, the club has been at the epicenter of comedy innovation for four decades, giving chucklesmiths the opportunity to devise ever more ingenious ways of eliciting laughs from patrons and laugh approximations from cyborg patrons