The 10-day festival of booze includes an all-female mixology competition
Prohibition was in full swing during the years Long Beach’s oldest bars were founded. We’ll let the ABC and the bars hash out the jazz age history of places like Joe Jost’s and Thirsty Isle founded in the 1920s, during the age of the 18th amendment.
Once booze was made legal again in 1933, joints like the V Room and O’Connell’s started the taps flowing again. Today, the port city is swimming in places to imbibe, so the fine folks at Visit Long Beach came up with Long Beach Last Call. The 10-day celebration of bar culture by the sea celebrates dozens of breweries, cocktail lounges, burger joints and glamorous gin joints you may not have known you needed to visit.
The V Room in Long BeachCredit: Photo by Chris Nichols
What sets the 2026 edition apart is the all-ladies cocktail competition coming up on Monday, March 2 at Port City Tavern. Female mixologists currently working at bars in Long Beach are invited to create original cocktails with Mijenta tequila, a woman-owned and operated producer out of Jalisco, Mexico.
Original entries can be submitted via email and must include the ingredient list, instructions, photos of the bartender and the drink and of course a genius name that transports the drinker to another dimension.
In addition to a panel of lady judges, there will be a people’s choice award, since visitors can sample the cocktails before voting. Submissions must be entered by February 23rd and the tasting takes place a week later.
Alter Ego bar at the Fairmont Breakers in Long BeachCredit: Photo by Chris Nichols
Between now and then, hit up the food scene meet-up at Halo in the gloriously restored Fairmont Breakers Hotel on Ocean Boulevard (did you know there’s a tunnel under it?) to a bartending talent show at Que Sera. Midnight Oil is presenting a Historias y cócteles celebrating Mexico, China, and the Lunar New Year or you can learn how to craft a proper Irish Coffee at the Auld Dubliner. Take a trip around the world without ever leaving Iowa by the Sea.
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