His impressive Hye West Saloon was like ‘Cheers’ — until it burned in the Eaton fire

By Marah Eakin

, Los Angeles Times

Before the January fires came, Brian Gardner had 300 Polaroids on the wall of his basement saloon, the Hye West Saloon of Santa Poco. He had bottles of booze too — well over 1,000, to be exact — but the Polaroids he hung around the perimeter of the 300-square-foot bar nestled in a storage room under some stairs at his Altadena home were more important to him.

Each snapshot featured a friend, captured on their first night in the bar, plus a nickname Gardner had bestowed upon them for use in the saloon. There was Jade Girl VO (for a judo move), Dog Fart (murky origins) and 1818 (to mark a first visit to the saloon on Jan. 8, 2018). Gardner’s dad was Soda Pop, since he was a teetotaler. Gardner’s kids, Lucca and Golden — elementary school students with a passion for ginger beer — were Whipper Snapper and Lil Deputy Doo-Doo Diaper, respectively.

It was like that at the Hye West. Named in honor of Gardner’s wife’s Armenian heritage and the movie “Three Amigos” — “Hye” being essentially the Armenian word for “Armenian” and Santa Poco the fictional Mexican town where the ’80s comedy was set — the saloon was part cozy clubhouse, part whiskey tasting room and part after-hours speakeasy. It wasn’t open to the public, just Gardner’s friends and acquaintances, who either knew to pop by or who’d been invited over at some point during the week. But that didn’t mean it didn’t have buzz.

Confused strangers used to reach out to Gardner after seeing his bar on Instagram or TikTok, asking if the saloon was open that weekend. He’d say no, that he didn’t sell alcohol and that it was just a home bar. Still, that didn’t stop the Hye West from having a Yelp page at one point, even though it wasn’t a business and more spiritually similar to a backyard tiki lounge or Grandpa’s rec-room hangout in the ’70s.

“On one hand, it was completely exclusive, because you had to know someone or know Brian to get in,” said Gregg Millward (saloon name: TNT), a Hye West regular. “On the other hand, it was just a neighborhood saloon. A watering hole, a place to enjoy some drinks with friends or neighbors or fellow dads and to meet new people. There was never an agenda, and it was always the most fun time. There was no place like it.”

The Hye West was born in 2015 when Gardner’s family bought a three-bedroom Spanish-style house on Altadena Drive. There were two unfinished, cinder-block basements beneath the house, and Gardner asked his wife, Karine, if he could use one. She said sure, then gave him a kegerator and a horseshoe beer tap for Father’s Day.

Though he’s a pharmaceutical salesman by trade, Gardner started building out the saloon by himself at night. He says he figured out how to construct his 10-foot bar mostly by watching YouTube videos. The space, which also featured vintage saloon art, was small but cozy, comfortably holding about 10 to 15 people and boasting its own bathroom, complete with a urinal. Gardner even tricked out his 1973 Cadillac Eldorado to be an extension of the saloon, with a “HYEWEST” vanity plate, longhorns over the front and a button inside that made the car moo, which his son liked to press.

INITIALLY, GARDNER HAD A SMALL COLLECTION OF MOSTLY BOURBON, PLUS THE KEG. HIS SELECTION EXPANDED IN A SURPRISING WAY: AFTER A RUN-IN WITH A FIRESTICK PLANT LEFT HIM TEMPORARILY BLIND AND IN EXCRUCIATING PAIN, GARDNER CONSULTED AN OPHTHALMOLOGIST WHO ADVISED A COURSE OF TREATMENT THAT FIXED HIM RIGHT UP. HE TOOK THE DOCTOR OUT TO THANK HIM, AND OVER DINNER AT ALEXANDER’S STEAKHOUSE IN PASADENA, GARDNER LEARNED THAT THE OPHTHALMOLOGIST KEPT TWO WHISKEY LOCKERS ON SITE, FULL OF HIGH-END HOOCH.

“I’d never tasted anything so good,” Gardner said. “I ended up buying some of the bottles I tasted that night, and it sparked my palate. I started chasing the flavors I liked, buying bottles of bourbon, then rye, then scotch and single malt. Then I got into tequila, and that led to mezcal. I like to joke that the doctor saved my vision but killed my liver.”

At the Hye West, each spirit had its own wall. Gardner built the shelves that held the bottles, adding more each time he ran out of space. He started making friends with other whiskey fans and dads around town, inviting them over to have a drink and chat about anything from limited-edition bottles to their relationships. Eventually, he even started his own 53-gallon “infinity barrel,” mega-sizing the idea of the whiskey “infinity bottle,” which collectors make by adding a bit of each new dram they try to an empty bottle, thus creating a new and constantly evolving blend.

Bob Burnell (saloon name: Jade Girl VO) first visited the Hye West in 2019. He said, “Brian never asks you to bring anything, and he’s never asked for money, but it kind of became a custom at the Hye West that if you were going to go and drink for free, then you would bring a bottle of bourbon to pour into the barrel, which I thought was perfect.” Gardner’s only request was that each bottle of bourbon be unflavored and at least 100-proof. He kept track of each of the more than 270 bottles that went into the barrel both in a diary and on a spreadsheet.

He often filmed people pouring their bottles into the barrel, posting clips to his social media of both the input and the subsequent testing, done via a bullet shell casing turned “dipping dog” attached to a fishing reel and dropped into the mix. When some of the clips went viral, Gardner quickly accrued more than 130,000 TikTok followers, many of whom requested to either send bottles for the barrel or to receive illicit samples of what was inside.

Now, though, both Gardner’s saloon and home are gone, burned sometime in the morning of Jan. 8 as the Eaton fire swept through Altadena. Gardner and his family had evacuated to La Crescenta, packing up a few clothes, their passports and some artwork by flashlight before locking up. (Gardner’s daughter had a broken leg at the time, so she only took one shoe.) Gardner didn’t think to grab anything from the saloon — they’d be back to the house the next day, he told his kids — so now the only thing he has to remember it are his memories and the countless pictures and videos on his phone.

The aftermath of the fire has been difficult. Gardner is on anti-anxiety drugs to help him function, and he’s started wearing a mouthguard at night because he’s been clenching his teeth in his sleep. He hasn’t been able to work out like he used to, and while he’s still effervescent and funny, he makes the occasional dark jab at what he lost, like posting a picture of his house key on Instagram with the caption, “This is a first… I’ve found my keys but lost my house.”

“I think that losing that barrel was big for Brian,” said David Driscoll (saloon name: Double D), Gardner’s friend and the former sales and marketing director at Mission Wine & Spirits in Pasadena. “Obviously, there’s the loss of his home and the loss of the whole world he’d curated, and that’s huge, but he had so many people contacting him because of this infinity barrel that he’d created that I think it had become sort of his lifeline out into society. He loved interacting with all the people who were excited to be a part of what he was doing.”

Driscoll has offered to find him another barrel so he can start fresh in the basement at his new rental in San Marino. Gardner is considering it but says he might hold off for a bit. He’s still mourning what he lost, quick to cry when talking about the Hye West even as strangers online send bottles to help kick-start his collection again. He’s posted videos on TikTok of what he’s found in the saloon’s ashes, which are full of shattered and melted glass. In one, he woefully points out the now-warped barrel hoops before panning over to show the decimated dipping dog.

“I’ve hugged more men in the last month than I ever had before in my life, just embracing them so tight,” Gardner said. “I’ve been telling people I love them every day.”

He says he’ll eventually rebuild both his house and his basement bar — one patron sent him a climate-controlled storage locker where he can keep inventory in the meantime — and has thoughts about how he’ll make the Hye West both bigger and better. (He wants higher ceilings, for instance, and a slightly smaller bar.) He’ll have help too, with Burnell noting that Gardner and his family had hosted so many people over the years who want to give back: “If we all had the skills and tools, we could probably get his house rebuilt in a couple of days.”

“The Hye West was just the most fun place to get together,” Gardner said. “It was like ‘Cheers.’ It was the place where everybody knew your name, where you weren’t bothered by other people, you could drink whatever you wanted, taste whatever you wanted and listen to whatever you wanted.” Perhaps one day, it’ll be all those things for Altadenans again.