At barely 5 p.m. on a Thursday in Sherman Oaks, the party has already started at Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill.

Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” blasts from the sound system, and a crowd of regulars settles in along a well-worn bar. Flat-screen TVs glow — cued up and ready for the Los Angeles Rams game. 

The dimly lit, wood-paneled space holds the lived-in scent of stale beer and one too many long nights — time feels suspended. Multi-colored Christmas string lights drape from the rafters in September, casting a warm, festive glow. 

Strangers swap stories across barstools like old friends — and it seemed as if nobody stayed a stranger for long. 

“When does the dancing start?” one guy asks, smiling as he strolls through the door.

Within the hour, while most of Los Angeles was still fighting its way through traffic, the crowd inside more than doubles — filling the room with the kinetic energy of a community that knows its time might be running out.

Pineapple Hill isn’t just a neighborhood institution, tucked behind an In-N-Out Burger, off of Ventura Blvd. — the long-running dive bar went viral nationwide back in 2020 as a face of the devastating toll COVID-era restrictions took on restaurants, after owner Angela Marsden posted an emotional video appealing to be allowed to open the outdoor dining space she’d spent tens of thousands creating.

At the time, she was able to crowdfund her way to survival — reportedly netting roughly $185,000 via a GoFundMe.

Once again, the strip mall standby is facing closure — this time in favor of sweeping redevelopment at the site, located near the key Valley intersection of Ventura and Beverly Glen Blvds. And devastated regulars say yet another piece of Southern California neighborhood life is being wiped away.

A local fixture since 1978 — earning it an official designation as a City of Los Angeles Legacy Business — Pineapple Hill was hit with a sudden 60-day notice to vacate on Aug. 6.

Other small businesses on the property were also reportedly served the same notice, with the apparent lone survivor being the In-N-Out. 

Marsden told the California Post that the eviction notice feels like a betrayal — after years of reassurances from the owners.

The first signs of potential trouble came seven years ago, she said, when tenants were shifted to month-to-month leases — with the promise of a future remodel. Marsden was told she would get the first right of refusal to negotiate a new lease.

Instead, the ax fell without warning.

“They didn’t put anything in writing,” Marsden said. “They didn’t mention leases. And they are not responding to the emails that I sent them.”

The developer, Blumax Partners, gave Marsden until Oct. 6 to tear down her permitted patio and completely empty both the saloon and an adjacent space she rents. 

Requests to the developer and leasing agent by the California Post for comment were unsuccessful.

“I just don’t have a lot of money left. Obviously, we’re a pub. We’ve been through everything,” Marsden said. “I don’t even make $60,000 a year. I do this because I love my community … I will have no income when this shuts down.”

The human cost extends far beyond Marsden. Her 16 employees now face the prospect of the unemployment line — including her kitchen staff, some of which have worked the line since the saloon’s doors first opened in 1978. 

Moving is financially impossible in the current climate in Los Angeles, Marsden said — citing rising commercial rents and struggles with permitting. 

“Right now the math doesn’t math for restaurants and pubs,” she sighed — rattling off the names of seven long-standing eateries she said had closed nearby in just three weeks. “Unless you’re a high-end restaurant that caters to the very wealthy, how is anybody going to survive?”

Marsden launched a Change.org petition — aimed at gathering 5,000 signatures to force the landlords to the negotiating table or lobby the Los Angeles City Council for commercial rent protections for historic businesses. Right now, she has 1,157 signers, she said.

For the locals who rely on the dark, cozy bar to escape the sprawl, Pineapple Hill is an irreplaceable refuge.

“I don’t want this place remodeled,” said David Sax, a retired widower who has frequented the watering hole for more than 25 years. “I’m old, I like the old style of things. And I just think it would be a tragedy… This is a wonderful community.”

For regular Alexandra Moser, who has frequented the bar for over a decade, Pineapple Hill was a rare safe haven.

“It’s one of the few bars that I actually feel comfortable being a woman walking into alone, sitting at the bar and being like, ‘I can have a good time and not really worry about anything crazy happening,’” Moser said. “They’re tearing it down just because they want to do a new development or whatever. I have no idea where I’m going to go if they close down… It’s your local dive bar, and there aren’t a lot of those anymore.”

The bar has also served as an anchor for transplants, doubling as an official game-day hub for the Minnesota Vikings that routinely packed out the space.

“I came out here on my own, don’t have my parents out here, so it was really special,” said Jens Tulio, a Minneapolis native who hasn’t missed a game at the bar in four years. “I was shocked and devastated. I really felt like I was losing a piece of home. Places like Pineapple foster such incredible communities.”

Chad McCoy, a regular for eight years who leads the crowd’s Vikings “Skol” chants with drums, recalled arriving for a game at 6:30 a.m. to find every barstool claimed: “It was just absurd. Packed out at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday. My loyalty is to Angela and the bar.”

For others, the mahogany booths are monuments to fallen friends. A local patron, Lilit Minasian, pointed out a dedicated memorial plaque hanging in the bar honoring a former colleague who organized their office happy hours before his death. “When he passed away, we decided we were going to gather here in his honor and dedicate a little plaque for him,” she told The Post.

The work being done includes “exterior facade and storefront remodel of existing one and two story shopping center and restripping of parking lot,” according to the Los Angeles City Planning documents.

“They’re killing communities,” Ansley Layne, an LA content creator known as Spooky Foodie on Instagram, said in a viral post.

Since its establishment, Pineapple Hill has been more than just a place to grab a beer, but “a cherished gathering place where memories have been created, friendships have been forged, and the spirit of our locality has been celebrated,” Marsden wrote. Plenty of customers don’t even arrive with a drinking buddy, according to staff.

The disappearing sense of neighborhood camaraderie is exactly what has younger Angeleno’s like Layne worried.

“I’m 27,” Layne said. “I’ve fallen in love with the dive bars and the neighborhood bars that are more of a neighborhood closeness kind of vibe, and I feel like they’re going away at a very fast rate…This is where communities comes to congregate and talk to each other. If we don’t have this, we’re f-cked.”

Once again, Marsden is back on GoFundMe — with a new campaign titled “Save Pineapple Hill: Help Us Fight Or Find A New Home“. So far, she’s raised just $2,392 of her $9,000 goal.

The money is intended to help pay for legal assistance, she said, as the bar seeks a written agreement allowing it to return after the redevelopment, or help Pineapple Hill relocate elsewhere.

As the Oct. 6 eviction date creeps closer, regulars refuse to go quietly into the night — crowding the bar stools, ordering another round under the Christmas lights.