CIA – The California Institute of Abnormalarts

Good venue, but the place was so friggin hot, that it was unbearable to watch the very mundane show. The only thing good about this place was the price ($ 10) and watching the freaks who were also clients. The line just to get a drink at the bar was out the door. They only hired one bartender for the entire place, and the drinks tasted awful and were made with house liquor, no choice to even upgrade to brand name liquor.
The show «freak Show» was abysmal and very sub-​par at any price. It was so hot inside the theater that even the performers were commenting, health code violation guys. The lighting all around the place was horrible, with uneven concrete floors, unmarked stairs that you suddenly run into, it was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Keep you your premise liability insurance guys, because I kept commenting to my friends that someone was gonna fall and sue them at some point. Additionally, they only had one uni-​sex bathroom for all those clients. No Bueno.

Love this place, but haven’t been in a while. Called today to see if they were still in business, and was super happy to find out that they are. First time here was in the mid 90s when the band of an ex boyfriend used to play here. It was always so much fun with the good music, movies, great people and just an awesome ambiance. The owners of this place are super sweet for a couple of guys that own such creepy stuff. If you haven’t been, you definitely need to go. I promise it will be a treat.

From the moment I was asked to stick my arm through the ear to get my stamp I knew it was going to be weird lol. The guy was in character the moment he greeted us, which was funny, and unexpected, it made me wonder ‘wth am I walking into???’. Props to him for staying in character when when you could see on my face I was slightly confused lol
Place has creepy freak show décor, totally dig the layout/​décor! Didn’t get a tour but next time I go I just want to be amused about these «cursed objects». It makes for great conversation.

I LOVE this place. Such an über-​creepy, fun, and entertaining place to hang out for a gig, with tons of freaky things to look at between bands. I’m really surprised by the couple of bad reviews I’ve read regarding this place. I have performed at CIA and have nothing but positive things to say about it. The sound is great, the people that work there are very respectful to the artists, and the people that have come out to see me perform there have had nothing but positive things to say about the venue. Someone here mentioned that the props/​decorations look as if they were purchased at a crafts store. That’s complete crap. This is obviously somebody who has a bone to pick with this place. If you are into the macabre, kitsch, weird, sideshow type places you need to get to CIA for a show.

Definitely something different. I really enjoyed this place. Came during the variety show which was basically an impromptu comedy night. That was followed by a one piece act (man with guitar and hockey mask) who played along with his own pre-​recorded beats. Very good but very loud! But the real star of the show was the owner who took us on a tour of all the creepy, quirky, items covering the walls and shelves of this place. Three real mummified corpses, a cursed severed arm, bits and pieces of organic and nonorganic curiosities. Good selection of beer too. Be brave! Do it!

Pretty fun if you’re a patron. But if you’re a band/​DJ/​performer/​promoter? Don’t book here. They’re completely disorganized, incapable of keeping a schedule in order, and will wait until the 11^th hour to tell you they’ve double (or triple) booked your date. Amateur hour over here.

This is a gem! I’m enchanted with this place, I would think it would be more famous than it is. Enjoy live entertainment, super artisanal beer selection, indoor concert stage and outdoor area with large video projections. Ambiance? You need to experience it for yourself, wow. It’s a must-​see for locals and travelers, one of the most interesting attractions I’ve ever seen. Embalmed clowns? Occult relics and surreal artifacts with a pleasantly eccentric and comedic bar owner who gives a tour once every evening. Don’t miss it! You don’t want to take a picture if something that doesn’t want to be photographed… Check it out!

If you want to descend into Hell — or a Demon Circus — or enter the dreams of a creative psychopath — then CIA is the place for you. If Cirque de Sole was a beautiful magical Elviish Maiden — then this place would be a Shaman-​Troll-​King or the High Priest of a Dante’s Clown Underworld.
This is a great fun place. They rent it out to parties and floating clubs and are open at weird times with strange themes.
There is a great garden filled with lanterns also.
Anything can happen here — or so it seems.
It seems that there is valet parking on busy nights.

Ok there’s weird, freaky stuff to look at but it’s all cheap, fake, tacky crap that can be created from a visit to Hobby Lobby or Michael’s. The dude said it was all legit movie props and he played Jeffrey Dahmer in a TV movie. Right buddy, what ever gets you through the day. The booze were expensive and watered down, the pizza from Dominoes at $ 5 a slice. Seeing how they screw their bands over repeatedly, I will not come back and patronize this «institute» again.

The highest density of WTF’s in an evening you will find in LA.
Good natured, (mostly) clean fun.

Yeeyo, go here. If you like fun.
Oh Kay, well first off, there are different types nights one can attend but I shall speak to freak show night.
Fun place. Go here.
Seriously go.
This really is a hidden and lesser known way awesome place/​drink zone/​fun area of lots of goood.
The décor’ spectacular varies with many oddities looking to catch an eye… Or three.
Enjoy strange and different regular and yeah. Extreme sideshows and exhibits.
Coolio was there.
Drinking fun with cool dancing sounds also known as the form of music.

This place robbed me! After taking $ 20 for a cover fee for me and my friend, and $ 18 later for an over priced cider, they kicked us out!!! Were we tipsy? Sure. But the fact they took our money and made FALSE accusations is beyond acceptable! We were there for not even an hour, and $ 40 out! The bartender falsely identified us for spilling drinks at the bar, spilling other’s drinks, and taking a mask off the wall. Funny there was NO mask where we were. Maybe outside where’s we did not go?! So the owner then claimed that they had us acting so out of control on camera, BUT denied us the right to watch the footage. Then continued to state that they were going to call the cops. I should have agreed to call the cops since they robbed us! I’ll be calling the owner to speak to him again. I want to see this said footage, because we were not the ones spilling drinks at the bar and taking masks off the wall! Overall, a total shit place!!!

C. I. A. California Institute of Abnormalarts​! I am beside myself how cool this place is! That is why I will put on Rockabilly and everything under that umbrella there starting Thursdays in Nov. (except Thanksgiving). It’s 10 bucks to get in and even if you werent comeing because you love the line up and a cool crowd will be there, you STILL would be happy to pay the door fee just to get in and hang at this place. I am personally thrilled I dont have to convince THIS owner to not have obnoxious sports on the scnen while Rockabillly shows are going on. I have nothing against good ol’ American Sports but after 10pm at night in a club they are obnoxious to the atmosphere! Go to a sports bar you jocks if you want sports reruns but the music wont be as good and the crowd will be pedestrian! And the atmosphere here is opulent, macabre, hip, vintage, and in the back yarr fabulous movie scren will only show cool stuff that goes with the atmosphere. The owner collects antiquities from 1920s China Town Freak Shows and they are displayed though out. The collections on the side patio will thrill you! The bar room itself is so cozy– vintage wood paneled walls and vintage bar. The room and stage to hear music and performers is wonderful to dance in and the beautiful red velvet curtain closes while bands change equipment and create a great room and floor for dancing. I cant wait to spend my Thursdays in that place!!!

The best way to introduce yourself to CIA is to come on Freakshow night which is the last Friday of every month. You can Facebook them to see shows that they have weekly too.
Get here early, snag a seat, and wait for the show to start! Be disgusted, amused, intrigued, delighted– more or less– the whole time buy asshole clowns, burlesque, firebreathers, puppeteers, and other types of freak show performers. An awesome band will start the night off, like a Horse, a Bucket and a Spoon, and another band will end the night.
Request and take a tour with Carl and see all the cool weird stuff that they have there. They are always bringing in new… Heads.
After the show, if you are people inclined, mill around and mingle with performers n attendees until closing.
Whoever is down, go to Denny’s to continue the night!

The place is really different! Not the kind of place I expected in Los Angeles. More like San Francisco… It’s like Jim Rose circus side show meets Asia. There are all kinds of strange artifacts surrounded by red Asian décor. It’s odd, unique, and interesting all at once. Think, antique store but with alcohol and stories behind all the items.
I stopped into this place for a beer and wanted to stay longer. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time. I had a really good hard root beer and watched old videos for about 30 minutes. The best one was an old David Bowie video. I don’t know if I had ever seen one before but it was great.
The bartender was friendly and explained a little about the place. He offered by a tour for $ 5.00 but I wasn’t interested at that time. I overheard part of another group’s tour and it sounded interesting. I think I missed out. I’ll probably go back for more hard root beer, videos and strange antiquities.

I wish I had known of this place years ago when I was still hitting the bars. My boyfriend and I went last month and we loved it. It’s unique, the beer and wine list are small but perfect. The owner was a great story teller and the props and artifacts were definitely interesting and creepy.

Get the tour! The owner was such a cool guy with such cool stories. You can tel how much he loves the place and that was great to experience. On the day I visited it was pretty empty. I loved the patio playing old music videos!
They also have craft beer.

Came here for scaryaoke… sang, shared the stage with a dead dog, saw boobs, had a ravenous woman devour my tongue while a crowd cheered, watched people eat alcoholic hearts from the hands of their loved ones and saw various taxidermied creatures. All hosted by a demon and a necromancer. ¹⁰⁄₁₀ would bang again.

This venue is TERRIBLE! What place books bands then cancels the event with two bands left to play? The owner/​whatever he is, cancelled the band that I PAID to see! Wouldn’t issue a refund either. I drove over an hour to this venue just to be cancelled on. I would not recommened booking shows here or giving them ANY business! Would have rated ZERO stars, but Unilocal made me rate it…

This place is great. Went to go watch a sideshow. They let them do things on stage not many places would. It was Crazy Awesome! The owner was supper nice, as well as the rest of the staff, the food was just delicious, and I even ran into a celebrity. Highly recommend this place.

Wow. This place is beyond cool. If you like old school, dimly lit, funky, hole in the wall bars: you’ve arrived! Carl, the owner, gave us an informative and interesting tour of his little awesomely freaky outdoor museum (things like shrunken heads, embalmed bodies & haunted paintings). The band was awesome, can’t wait to check out the upcoming freak show & scaryokke!

Scaryoke is fun, but the only reason to go. That being said, I have a few words of advice: Do not order drinks that aren’t in the bottle.
The beer in bottles in fine, and they have some neat stuff. However, every time I’ve ordered a mixed drink or just a plain shot, they’ve seemed watered down or barely used any alcohol at all. They do NOT make the drinks in front of you, which is a big no-​no at any bar. For the prices they charge, I feel ripped off and sober.

Laid back kind of fun… just searched Unilocal last night to find somewhere to go to on a boring night and luckily stumbled upon this place. Drove there and got just in time for their thursday scary-​oke night. Cool hosts and chill people hanging out. Like the experience very much all in all

Maybe it’s because my expectations were set high because of the positive online reviews but this place was a disappointment. Visually, it’s very interesting, the staff was friendly enough and there was a pretty decent DJ spinning. What it isn’t however, is a «bar». They had a small variety of bottled beers and an even smaller variety of mixed drinks. The «bartender» didn’t know the rum they carried, they were also out of soda and their bottled water was warm. The crowd on Friday night was 95% late teens/​very early 20s. The other 5% seemed to be their parents. After paying $ 10 cover charge, we walked out less than 15 minutes later disappointed and thirsty. I’m giving them 2 stars as opposed to 1 because the staff really was quite friendly.

Come here, or play here if you’re a musician…
It’s just a weird place… but really cool. Very small stage/​place. Larger outdoor patio area and at night they have a projector machine and show live music shows. Really good sound too. They were showing some Bowie (Ziggy Stardust era)…good stuff.
I’ll be back!
The guy at the door is cool too!:) $ 10 cover

This place is amazing and inspiring, creatively speaking! I saw the band Other People’s Puppets play here, and to this day, it’s one of the greatest, if not the greatest, show I have ever seen. Mind-​bending and beautiful! I love the CIA! This place is incredible! The environment here is electric and raises the hair on your arms. I can’t really describe it to you. You just have to live it for yourself! I will say this, it’s one of the GREATEST, trippiest, bars in all of AMERICA, and that is for certain!

Last Friday night, Matt B. and I went to the California Institute of Abnormalarts to attend an installment of the horror-​themed reading series Shades & Shadows. I’ve been to a lot of readings in a lot of different venues, but never in one like CIA. The place is utterly unique.
It’s located on Burbank Blvd. in North Hollywood, where street parking is moderately easy. We parked a couple blocks up and passed a church meeting in a non-​church building, with praise music blasting out of open doors. As a result, maybe, the location seemed particularly random.
There was a line to get in, wholly because the ticket master was just having the time of his life. He talked to every person in a creepy voice than rang a loud buzzer as he took the $ 10 cover and stamped each hand. It was bizarre and almost unpleasant but kind of amusing too.
We went in and passed through an outdoor area with a lot of seating and a projection about horror and humor playing on a big screen. The reading was inside a little theater room with a colorful stage. From that room, we had access to a small bar, where we bought bottles of Fat Tire and Sierra Nevada to go with the show. The menu also featured stuff a random selection of food — pizza, I think, and shrimp wonton soup. Service was friendly.
Every room was pervasively decorated with an eclectic assortment of dead-​eyed dolls, strange wall hangings, and Halloween curios. There were skeletons and eyeballs, way too many clowns. It would have been cheesy if it weren’t so committed — the actual result was cool, weird, and successfully spooky. The place had an almost museum-​like feel. The CIA could be the creepy hoarder cousin of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. No MacArthur grant pending, but anyone can see the singular vision represented in this temple to horror and weirdness.
The reading was great. Ben Loory read, and he is the best. One of the screenwriters behind Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh was another of the readers. My dad watched that movie during family time when I was in third grade and it gave me vivid nightmares for a year.
I might never have heard of the CIA if it weren’t for the reading, but it is a definite Los Angeles treasure. I had a great time and hope to come back. It’s a fun, freaky place.

Been here a bunch of times. Fun to take people who haven’t been here before. I’ve seen random bands here, my boyfriend played here, and I’ve gone a few times on a night I didn’t even know who was playing just to get a night out. Its a cozy spot but decent. They have decently priced drinks and beer and a spot to go outside and hang on the patio while they play old b&w movies. Inside is a stage that u can get right up to. It’s basically a house converted into a maniacal scary clown/​carnival/​fetuses in jars and 2 headed creatures on shelves kind of place where you can watch a band play. Sit on the floor, stand, whatever. Its a hole in the wall that I’m glad is there :)
If you haven’t been before, just go. Even if you hate the band its a fun place to hang out for awhile.