The Brief

Possibly the chicest and most indulgent way to unwind after a long day of work is with a perfectly-chilled martini in hand. Still, it’s usually a treat: martinis are famously high-brow beverages, and finding one that won’t break the bank in L.A. can prove difficult.

But if you know where to look, you’ll find that the city has plenty of martini deals. These five spots all stir up a delicious martini, and all of them offer generous happy hours where each ‘tini is $10 a pop.

Cento Raw Bar (West Adams) 

There are many reasons to love Cento Raw Bar, the sister restaurant to Cento Pasta Bar next door, and one of L.A.’s dining scene’s newest darlings. For starters, it looks like a mermaid’s cave, but looks aren’t all this sweet oceanic outpost has to offer. Martinis and oysters, obviously, are a match made in heaven, and diving into Cento’s $10 “golden hour” (from 5-6 p.m.) martini-oyster is as delightful as it sounds. The martinis are made with gin or vodka and arrive in fun, color-blocked glassware. If you order yours dirty, you’ll get your olives on a little dish on the side. They’re well-balanced, perfectly chilled, and wonderful to wash down oysters with.

Dante (Beverly Hills)

The dirty and Dante martinis play nice together.

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Cecilia Seiter

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LAist

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I’ve never had a bad martini in New York City, which is why Dante — a classic New York joint with a stunning location in Beverly Hills — is a must for a martini happy hour in my book. It’s famous for the tricolor olives in its signature ‘tini (a powerful blend of Ford’s gin, Ketel One vodka, Noilly Prat vermouth, Dolin Blanc vermouth, Nardini Cedro liqueur, olive and lemon bitters), but the dirty here never disappoints.

Like all good things, Dante’s dirty martini is deceivingly simple: Reyka vodka, olive oil, olive bitters and a pinch of salt with a dose of olive brine mist. Olives come chilled on the side. Martini hour is 3-5 p.m. daily.

Found Oyster (East Hollywood)

Olive lovers will find Found Oyster’s martini delightful.

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Cecilia Seiter

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LAist

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The folks behind Found Oyster knew what they were doing when they married excellent seafood, wine and martinis in their bustling neighborhood bistro.

You’ll find $10 martinis everyday from 4-6 p.m. here, and you can order your martini with olives, onion or a twist. The dirty martini is generous, with fat, blue cheese-stuffed olives served on the lip of a chilled Nick and Nora. There’s plenty to sample from the raw bar — seafood platters, scallop tostadas and sea urchin service — and the large plates, like the wedge salad and the pork caesar schnitzel, are not to be missed.

Maydan (West Adams) 

Don’t miss out on Maydan’s happy hour snacks.

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Courtesy Maydan

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There’s something beautiful about a martini that subtly departs from tradition, and Maydan, the acclaimed Lebanese-inspired restaurant inside its eponymous food hall, delivers on this front.

The Za’atar martini brings together olive oil washed vodka, dry vermouth and sumac-sesame oil for a savory spin on a classic cocktail. Happy hour is Tuesday through Thursday 5-7 p.m. You’ll also find discounted snacks on the happy hour menu, like charcoal-grilled kebabs and housemade dips.

The Nice Guy (West Hollywood) 

Jazz and martinis were made for each other.

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Courtesy The Nice Guy

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Martini Mondays are a great excuse to leave the house on a weeknight. West Hollywood’s The Nice Guy offers a generous range of $10 martinis, including dry, dirty and espresso martinis paired with live Italian jazz. You can also order a $30 martini meal to the tune of a burger, fries and martini (the Classic) or a Caesar salad, rigatoni Bolognese and a martini (the Mr. Nice Guy.)

Genaro and Catalina Ventura moved to the South L.A. neighborhood of Jefferson Park more than 25 years ago. The Craftsman-style house they found was a dream — spacious, with a yard where they could garden and their children and dog could play.

What they didn’t know before moving in was that just a few hundred yards behind the house is an active oil drilling site.

Genaro Ventura, a now-retired custodian for the city of L.A., worked nights. When he’d come home around 2 a.m., the smell of oil and chemicals was often strong in the air.

“Since the night is quiet, there’s no traffic or smog,” Genaro Ventura told LAist in Spanish. “You can really smell the air from the drill site, and it’s a terrible odor.”

[“Como la noche es calmada, pues no hay tráfico, no hay smog, y puede uno pues percibir el aire del drill site, y es un olor muy feo."]

Five years after the family moved in, Genaro was diagnosed with cancer in his left kidney and had to have it removed. In 2013, a brain tumor led to another surgery, and the following year another brain tumor required radiation treatment. He has to return regularly for scans. Most recently he’s developed lung cancer and is scheduled to start chemotherapy.

With no family history of cancer, the Venturas suspect the illnesses are related to air pollution from the nearby drill site.

And it’s not just Genaro Ventura. The family’s last dog died of cancer. Their elderly chihuahua now has cancer, too. Two of Catalina Ventura’s friends nearby were also diagnosed with cancer and recently moved away. Their son and many children in the neighborhood grew up with asthma.

“I’d like to leave here,” Catalina Ventura said in Spanish. “But we can’t — this is our home and we like the area, plus we don't have the money to move, so we’ve stayed here despite everything we’ve gone through.”

[“Yo me quisiera ir de aqui. Pero no podemos porque estamos aquí, es nuestra casa y nos gusta el área, pero tampoco tenemos dinero para movernos, así que seguimos aquí a pesar de lo que sufrimos.”]

Now, after more than a decade of community organizing, the drill site could be shut down. The city has scheduled a hearing this week to consider revoking E&B Natural Resource’s license to operate the site.

The Murphy Drill Site in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

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Sarah Craig

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Faces of Fracking

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“It is really the  best chance we have ever had to see this toxic industrial site shut down and removed from our neighborhood,” longtime South L.A. resident Richard Parks said at a recent community town hall at a church down the road from the drill site. Parks is the president of the nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership, a group that has spearheaded the shutdown effort.

In response to questions from LAist, a spokesperson for E&B emphasized the company’s compliance with regulations and said the facility “plays an important role in supplying locally produced petroleum to the Los Angeles Basin.”

The spokesperson also pointed to a July report the company commissioned from environmental consulting firm Roux Associates. The report says “the administrative record contains no scientific evidence that the Murphy site jeopardizes or adversely affects public health or safety of nearby residents or workers.”

Daniel Murphy's home was a sprawling estate on West Adams Boulevard in the early 20th century.

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Courtesy L.A. Public Library

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Why an oil drilling site is in the middle of a neighborhood 

What’s known as the Murphy drill site on West Adams Boulevard sits atop the vast Las Cienegas oil field.

The site’s name comes from Daniel Murphy, a business tycoon who lived on an estate there in the early 20th century.

Murphy, who made his money in cement, oil and railroads, was also a devout Roman Catholic, so after his death, his family donated the property to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. For decades, the Archdiocese has leased the property to various oil companies. Most recently, the site has been operated by E&B Natural Resources.

In a statement, the Archdiocese told LAist it "has no direct control over the facility" and that "the health and well-being of the community remain a priority." It added that the Church understands E&B has complied with regulations "and has taken efforts to address the concerns of the community."

Although oil wells are present throughout Los Angeles, the effects are largely unequal. Through the mid-20th century, racist housing laws and discriminatory lending practices relegated people of color to certain neighborhoods.

Jefferson Park was one of those redlined neighborhoods and remains home to mostly Black and Latino residents.

A 2022 study found twice the number of oil and gas wells in historically redlined neighborhoods, with L.A. topping the list.

A Google maps screenshot of the Murphy drill site, owned by E & B Natural Resources, in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of L.A.

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Google Maps

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How much oil is produced at the Murphy drill site? 

Since 2018, Oildale, California-based E&B Natural Resources has operated the Murphy drill site.

Production of crude oil at the site peaked in 1973 at about 1,588 barrels per day, and of natural gas in 1981 at about 533 barrels, according to a 2024 amortization study commissioned by the city.

Ever since, production has declined. In 2022, E&B extracted some 251 barrels per day of oil and 21 barrels of natural gas from the Murphy site — a relatively small amount by oil production standards. All oil drilling within L.A. city limits now makes up less than 2% of the state’s oil.

In a statement to LAist, a spokesperson for E&B said the site remains valuable.

“Maintaining responsible local production also helps meet regional energy needs with resources produced close to where they are ultimately consumed,” the company spokesperson wrote.

Where oil and gas comes from in California.

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Courtesy CJM Petroleum Consulting Inc.

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The health effects of living near oil drilling

Today, it’s easy to miss the Murphy drill site. A mass of piping and oil wells is hidden behind a wall and manicured hedges, and next door to low-income apartments, an AIDS Healthcare Foundation clinic and an education center for children with hearing loss. A church, library, elementary school and high school are also nearby.

At the convent directly behind the site, Roman Catholic nuns are tasked with caring for the sick who call for them.

On a recent afternoon, Sister Claudia  of the Servants of Mary told LAist in Spanish that dark soot often covers the roof and walls of the building.

“A black dust settles even on the leaves of the trees and gets into the house," she said.

[“Un polvo negro que se queda hasta en las hojas de los árboles y entra a la casa."]

Many of the sisters have allergies they never had before living there, she said, and two of the sisters have cancer.

Sister Claudia, left, and Sister Maria de Jesus of the Servants of Mary convent in Jefferson Park.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Since at least 2014, the site has been the cause of dozens of complaints to local air quality regulators. People who live or work nearby have reported strong oil and chemical odors, noise and other concerns, according to records obtained by local nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership and shared with LAist.

For more than a decade, the group and its partners have organized to gain more protections on the site and, ultimately, shut the drilling down.

They’ve gathered the experiences of nearby residents, many of whom have suffered multiple miscarriages, respiratory illness and cancer. Numerous studies have found that people living near oil wells, which have been found to leak carcinogens like benzene, are more likely to have higher rates of asthma, preterm births and cancer.

But such research is not enough to shut a site down, and it’s hard to prove exactly where those illnesses come from. So over the last decade, academic researchers have partnered with the community to try to do just that.

“The burden is often placed on the community to prove they're being harmed,” said Jill Johnston, an environmental health researcher at U.C. Irvine and previously USC, where she led the oil drilling research. “ We're trying to establish some of this data-driven evidence to support the observations that people have experienced for decades.”

The researchers and community members installed air monitors near Murphy and another nearby drill site. They found that the closer to the site people lived, the more likely they were to have reduced lung function.

“The amount of reduction we see is similar to what you would experience from living with a smoker,” Johnston said.

E&B disputes the findings, arguing that it did not measure "actual site emissions or exposure and cannot establish causation."

In another study, the researchers partnered with the community to collect hundreds of toenail clippings to measure toxic metals associated with oil drilling. They compared them to clippings from people not near drill sites.

“The closer you live to an oil drilling site, the more production it has, the more nickel and manganese that you have in your body,” Johnson said, explaining the study’s findings at a recent town hall ahead of the Thursday hearing.

Too much of such metals in the body can lead to a variety of symptoms, including respiratory and nervous system issues. At high exposure levels, nickel has been linked to an increased risk of cancer.

Signs in various languages warn of the potential for dangerous gas at the Murphy drill site.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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The Murphy drill site is in a neighborhood with a convent, homes and schools.

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Isabel Avila

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How to shut down a drill site

The organizing paid off. In 2023, the community won a hearing from the city to consider adding new regulations to protect public health. Those new rules would extend protections currently in use in wealthier, whiter parts of L.A. They included enclosing the site and using electric equipment instead of diesel where possible. E&B’s permit also limits operations to between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

But after an appeal from E&B, the city rolled many requirements back. For example, the site no longer is required to use electric equipment — E&B recently started burning more gas for electricity on site.

The site is also still not enclosed, despite the three-year-old mandate from the city. Neighbors say they have on multiple occasions seen, heard or smelled operations outside of the allowed hours.

“ They know the rules, but they choose not to follow them,” Parks said.

In a statement to LAist, a spokesperson for E&B said the enclosing of the site has been delayed due to complex permitting requirements from the city and that the company “is awaiting action by the city on the necessary approvals.”

In recent years, under E&B’s purview, the Murphy site has logged dozens of violations from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the state and the L.A. Fire Department, according to public records obtained by Redeemer Community Partnership and shared with LAist, as well as publicly available data.

Since 2019, some of the most concerning violations have been for at least four methane leaks greater than 50,000 parts per million — the explosive level of the gas. In January last year, an inspector identified a leak at 209,000 parts per million, four times that limit.

Outside of L.A., the state recently fined the company more than $1 million for violations at a site in Bakersfield, which the company has appealed.

Now, the city is considering revoking E&B’s permit to operate the site. City Councilmember Heather Hutt, who represents the area, called for a hearing after being presented with the evidence from local residents.

“The city and the community’s attempts to regulate and mitigate this site over the decades has failed,” Hutt wrote in a letter to the city’s zoning administrator ahead of the Thursday hearing. “I am calling for the zoning administrator to revoke this use and continue to reset the balance between community needs and corporate laxity in urban Los Angeles.”

Neighbors of the Murphy drill site have been fighting to get it shut down for years. They held a town hall July 18.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Signs and slogans were common at the July 18 town hall. Others read "Save South L.A." and "End neighborhood drilling."

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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What’s next

During the city’s hearing to consider revoking E&B’s permit the zoning administrator will hear testimony from residents, who can sign up and submit their comments during the meeting or ahead of time. Meanwhile, E&B plans to present its rebuttal to city staff’s latest report on compliance at the site and other concerns.

At the town hall, Parks discussed another drill site, a little over a mile away, called the Jefferson site.

He and other local residents successfully campaigned to get that site shut down, too. The oil company that owned the property eventually decided to sell instead of facing litigation and the cost of carrying out practices to better protect public health. In 2023, Parks and his group secured grants to purchase the property, where they plan to build a park and permanently affordable housing.

“Bit by bit, an amazing transformation is taking place,” Parks said at the recent town hall. “We are receiving beauty for ashes. … If we show up and we share our stories, if we call for environmental justice, if we call for care for our common home, we are well-positioned to build something beautiful and enduring for our community.”

Catalina and Genaro Molina at home.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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After the town hall, Catalina and Genaro Ventura returned home and sat outside on their porch. They said they hope this is a turning point to better protect future generations.

“I hope the city becomes aware and does something for the people, for the animals, for the children, for the elderly. For everyone, for everyone,” Catalina Ventura said in a Spanish.

[“Y pues que la ciudad tome conciencia y haga algo por la gente, por los animales, por los niños, por los ancianos. Por todos, por todos."]

When Gov. Gavin Newsom, using his executive power, refused to extradite a physician accused of prescribing and mailing abortion pills to a Louisiana woman, he said California would “not ever” allow “extremist politicians” to punish its doctors.

Newsom, who is considering a run for president, has long championed reproductive rights, but state lawmakers in the Democratically controlled California Legislature know future governors might not have the same political beliefs.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host endorsed by President Donald Trump, has vowed to honor these types of extradition requests from other states if he’s elected, saying that Louisiana “is trying to uphold what its people voted for, and California is undermining it.” His opponent, Democrat Xavier Becerra, has said he would deny the requests.

Legislation advancing in Sacramento is the latest chapter in a tit for tat that’s been happening between conservative and liberal states since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal legal protections for abortion.

A bill by state Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, which is being heard in committee, would take some decisions out of the governor’s hands, requiring governors to deny extradition requests for healthcare providers who prescribe abortion medication or administer gender-affirming care. It would also shield anyone in California who helped patients travel to California or another state to receive legal care.

While opponents cast “shield laws” as an incursion on other states’ authority, supporters of the bill view it as insurance — even with Becerra leading Hilton 52% to 31%, according to May polling by the University of California-Berkeley Institute of Government Studies.

Newsom spokesperson Marissa Saldivar said the governor doesn’t comment on pending legislation. Hilton and Becerra didn’t return calls for comment.

“Protecting providers from prosecution should not rely on shifting political winds or a single person’s decision,” said Alyssa Sherer, a nurse practitioner who spoke in support of the bill at a Senate committee hearing in June. Sherer is also the medical director at Hey Jane, a telehealth medication abortion provider.

Thirteen states have banned abortion outright, and 28 other states ban abortion somewhere between six weeks and viability. At the same time, other states that allow abortion have enacted shield laws to protect doctors and nurses from liability when they prescribe across state lines.

People living in states with total abortion bans are increasingly getting abortion pills prescribed via telehealth, from 74,000 abortions in 2024 to 92,000 abortions in 2025, according to the Guttmacher Institute, citing numbers from its Monthly Abortion Provision Study.

Critics of shield laws say that states have a legitimate interest in enforcing their own statutes and that such laws represent an attempt by some states, like California, to nullify the legal decisions of others.

“If California says, ‘We’re not going to honor any other state’s laws. We’re going to ship abortion pills into your states. You can’t have a law that says abortion is illegal,’ I don’t know — that doesn’t seem like a workable situation,” said Greg Burt, who is vice president of the California Family Council and has spoken in opposition to shield laws at the State Capitol.

Twenty-one other states and Washington, D.C., have similar shield laws, but Arizona, California, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania rely on an executive order, which could be reversed by a successor, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Amanda Barrow, a senior staff attorney at the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at UCLA Law, said passing extradition protections would put California on firmer footing, because an executive order “could be revoked by a governor who is anti-abortion or anti-gender-affirming-care.”

Hilton has said he would do just that if elected.

“Just as I wouldn’t want to see Louisiana coming in and undermining something that we voted for here in California,” the GOP candidate told KQED in January.

During a May gubernatorial debate, Becerra said he was strident about protecting reproductive rights as the state’s attorney general.

“Absolutely no,” Becerra said of allowing California physicians to be extradited.

This year, Hawai‘i added gender-affirming care to its existing shield laws. And Oregon expanded extradition protections, including banning law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state or federal investigations into care that’s legal in the state.

But Republican legislators in conservative states have cast telehealth visits as an end run around their laws. And some have moved to restrict abortion pill access.

The governors of Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Dakota have signed bills this year that criminalize the sale, purchase or distribution of medication that induces an abortion. Those states make it a felony to provide medication abortion drugs to people who are seeking to end a pregnancy. The laws impose up to 10 years in prison with potentially tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Mississippi amended the state’s controlled substances code to add abortion pills as a criminal category. Although the state already prohibits abortion broadly, the measure specifically addresses distribution, which could subject out-of-state providers to prosecution.

In January, Louisiana tried to extradite a California doctor, Remy Coeytaux, accused of mailing abortion pills to a patient. Newsom denied the request. Likewise, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul denied Louisiana’s February 2025 extradition request for a doctor in her state.

Texas has taken a slightly different legal tact. Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, obtained a default judgment of more than $100,000 against the New York doctor targeted by Louisiana, but a judge dismissed it, citing New York’s shield law.

Neither Paxton nor Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill responded to requests for comment.

Fear of being charged with a crime for providing quality medical care is contributing to physicians leaving medicine, said Sacramento emergency room doctor Kamara Graham, who is vice president of the California chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which is supporting the bill.

“It’s really conflicting and hard for us to weigh that concern of: Will I get extradited and charged and potentially be taken away from my family? Or do I do the right thing for my patient?” Graham said.

The availability of medication used in most abortions could soon change nationwide. Under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration recently confirmed it is conducting a safety review of mifepristone, one of two medications in pill form that is used in most U.S. abortions. The FDA maintains the drug is safe and effective.

If the FDA were to decide that mifepristone is not safe, such a ruling would supersede state laws, even in states where abortion is legal. If mifepristone is restricted, many telehealth groups have said they would switch to using only the other medication, misoprostol.

“The elephant in the room is whether the Trump administration, particularly after the midterms, makes some kind of move to put national limits on access to abortions,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at UC-Davis who has written several books on reproductive health law.

“Not everything is something that the legislature can solve for,” Ziegler said, “because there's some uncertainty about how the federal courts are going to react to all of this.”