O’Hurley’s Beach Bar

Cool dive bar. Small but has everything you need. Lots of locals. Only one pool table.

Wanted to post about Ohurley’s it is known as a dive bar, but I wish to disagree. Large selection of ice cold beer, alcohol and great service. Touch Tunes juke box, pool table, always a great time. If in Leucadia, stop in, you will be happy you did!

This is a cautious 4-​star review. My experience was 4-​star, great service, great beer selection, decent whiskey (for a dive bar) and cool people. They don’t have food, but they do allow you to bring food in.
Make no mistake, this place is a DIVE bar. Think, shot and beer bar– juke box, pool table… If you come expecting anything more, you might be disappointed. But when you just need a local, no-​frills bar this is your joint.
I have read some other bad reviews of this place and can see how bad patrons could ruin a good experience. I know that joints like this tend to get rowdy the later the night gets. So if you are looking to get a beer and shoot some pool, just show up a little earlier in the evening.

This is my favorite spot in Leucadia. Love Jewel, awesome service and great personality!

My only criteria for a good dive bar is that it isn’t dirty, and the bartenders aren’t rude. So, all in all, this is a good dive bar if that’s what you’re looking for. Pretty good selection of beers and cocktails and a nice juke box.

OK, if you’re looking for a chichy ultra hip LA club scene… look elsewhere. If you want fun with a loud jukebox, great drinks and pool, this is the place. Open air, two blocks from some of the greatest surf in Cali, more than once I’ve had great dance experiences with some super attractive women. Yeah, it’s fun and open ’til 2am.

Your standard North County Coastal Dive Bar.
Good tap selection, whacky locals, classic rock jukebox, and «cocktails» spelled incorrectly on the sign above the parking lot. Hilarious.
Can easily be included as a crawl stop among the other divey joints on Route 101.

Its a small looking shack hidden on a corner off the 101. If you’re looking for a place to be loud and mingle with the locals, this is the place to be.
It is divey but pretty well kept and not cluttered like most North County dive bars.
The bartenders here are very attentive and the drinks are pretty ok, I would recommend just sticking to straight shooters and shy away from your mixers. So ladies, a huge NO on margaritas or washington apples here. (honestly tasted horrible from experience) lol
They have a juke box that is updated with all the current music (big thumbs up)
and one pool table that is always being used, but the locals that play it are very friendly and dont mind you joining in on their game.
Overall, youll run into some weird drunks but you will certainly enjoy people watching and youll for sure have someone to talk to here.

Felt at home at this Beach dive, Jules the bartender was fabulous and the locals were awesome. Also loved the fact that they allowed dogs. I lived in Leucadia in the 80’s and was so glad to see it is still a beach surfer town. Affordable drinks. Would go there daily if I lived in the area.

Stopped in to this dive bar on Monday nite (which i like cuz they are usually real local people) and was pleasanty suprised it was full of characters and it was cean and had a great selection of music and had a nice pool table. The bartender was fantastic she served u like you were one of the family and the shift change at 7 bartender was just as cool…

They have Rude and disrespectful bartenders. This place sucks! One of the female bartenders really must hate working there or something. I enjoy a mellow atmosphere and peaceful staff when enjoying a beer, this place puts a bad taste in my mouth about the Encinitas bar community. I do not recommend making this your regular spot!

what a breath of fresh air, after spending two hours in the insufferable coffee shop that shall remain unnamed, down the street. i walked in rather sheepishly to ask the bartender whether she would allow me to use the bathroom. hours later, and two margaritas later, we exchanged a big bear hug. this is to say that i had a wonderful time at this bar. janessa, the bartender, is an absolute gem, the local customers friendly and unpretentious. the margaritas were phenomenal. the dude who complained that they wouldn’t serve his trashy bikini-​clad party needs to grow up, rather than giving this great establishment a single star. can’t wait to return (all the way from fullerton).

Fabulous dive bar. Perfect offset to the lame Encinitas scene. Friendly juke box oriented crowd. Open-​air layout. Reasonably priced drinks, but not overwhelmingly boozey. Fairly calm early, crowded later in the evening.

Solid 3-​stars– divey ambiance, fun staff, not really my scene but our group had fun. Digital jukebox requires money, but there was no music playing at all. Seems like a silly decision. Why not play music normally, and someone can pay to play a song they selected? Craft beer list looked solid and kegs tasted decently fresh. But nothing stood out that would make me want to come back. To be fair, we only dropped in because we had an hour wait at Sake House Yu Me Ya.

This is the dive bar the locals come to. It’s where I had a beers, made new friends, played on the jukebox and danced. If you’re down for adventures, and like friendly happy go lucky beach bums that just want to live the life. Come here, have a cold one. Its not much to look at but its about the vibe and what you make it!

awesome little bar… rolled up on a Saturday after picking up a board in Oceanside. it’s was around 11:30 Todd the owner was cool and so were the bartenders… didn’t leave til about 4 didn’t want to go… GOOD TIMES!!!

Had a great time at this place, bartender and owner took care of us! What up Todd!!! I will be back!

Hey there Mr. Barkeep — I know you spent a lot of money on the signs out front, but next time you might want to double check that you’re spelling ‘Cocktail’ correctly before they get hoisted 20′ in the air. Both of your signs are incorrect — although I suppose you get some points for consistency. (Once you’ve fixed that we can discuss the misuse of the apostrophe.)
Hey there Mr. Beerdrinker If you find the Regal Seagull just ’ too thighfalutin’, and you’re looking for the most casual bar in Leucadia to drop $ 5 on a pint or a G&T … you’ve found it. Clearly not a bar for those who have degrees in English.
A pool table, a liquor license, and a TV set. Boom. You’ve got a Beach Bar.

My husband and I came here with another couple last weekend. We had gone to a nice dinner beforehand and wanted somewhere low key to hang out, have a drink, and play a game of pool. When we arrived the place was as expected– a dive bar, it was practically empty when we arrived and had lots of good beer on tap. Perfect for us! We grabbed some beer and started playing pool. We were having a great time!
Until…about 15 minutes later when «the regulars» started pouring in. I assume they were regulars because of their familiarity with the bartender and bouncer. Everyone seemed nice enough, at first.
Then, my husband, my friends husband, and I, watched my girlfriend across the pool table get verbally assaulted by one of the female regulars. Now, the four of us are NOT fighters, nor do we verbally assault others, so to watch this unfold was really nerve racking. The bouncer did not seem to take note of this, despite the place being so small that he couldn’t have not seen it. We were still playing our game of pool so agreed to finish up and then leave to avoid these people. But, as we were finishing up, my husband was then verbally assaulted (terrible things said) by another regular patron– yet, the bouncer watched on and after a few minutes stepped in only to tell my husband that HE was out of line, defending the regular who started the whole thing! The other regulars cheered on of course. We left– really confused as to what just happened among ADULTS.
We won’t be back, and advise others to be cautious of the riff raff that frequent the place, as they can do and say whatever that want and if you say anything back or defend yourself, or even if you’re playing a game of pool and they want the table, you have to take the assaults and yield to their wishes and the bouncer will not help you at all and will only back up the behavior of the «regulars».
Awful experience.

I’m an unabashed fan of the 101 dive bar scene, and O’Hurley’s is one of the best. Tucked away into a tiny strip mall, O’Hurley’s is a place you’d never go to unless you knew it was there already. It’s about 400 sq feet of good times. Nearly unchanged from it’s prior incarnations, Uncle Duke’s and the Boardroom, O’Hurley’s features a long L-​shaped bar, some TV’s, a pool table, and not much else. It’s atmosphere is unpretentious, in the past few years, they’ve added some good beers on tap, and you can bring in your favorite taco shop food to eat at the bar. Personally, after getting some grooming done next door at Absolute Pawfection, I’ll stop in with the pups, grab a beer and watch them wrestle on the concrete floor.

Little hole in the wall. You might wanna be in the right mood as this place is some what trashy at times. Minimum $ 15 charge on cc transactions. Pool table is in a tight corner. It could be worse could be a hell of a lot better.

Everyone knows this place as where you go to sling the go-​powder you cooked up in one of the nearby motel’s bathtubs (or that you’re no longer allowed to sell down the street since The Leucadian was reformed). Plus I’m not even sure the place has real windows — I think someone hammers plywood over the openings each night round 2AM.
So O’Hurley’s seemed like an ideal place to do a beer stop during our bikini-​themed fun run last Sunday. It’s a rickety ol’ «beach bar,» riiiight?
Nope.
The bartender enforced a No Shirt No Shoes No Service regulation by extending it to include bikinis, depriving most of us of beer. Granted, there was a fair share of lads in bikinis in addition to our beautiful bikinied ladies, but come on, man.
I can almost understand the fear that we might mess up the fine linen tablecloths, drip sweat into the Chateaubriand, or rankle the Christian Coalition fundraiser on the veranda. And I do appreciate the homeless guy out front who wanted to lend us «the shirt literally off my back» so that we could grab a beer. But in my book:
1 bad attitude plus zero beers yields one star.

I assumed a «beach bar» would be somewhere by the beach. This place has a weird location & the view from the bay windows is if a gravel driveway. That being said I’m alway down for a good dive bar. I wish the bartender was more attentive though. Took forever to get a beer and it was dead. Maybe 6 people in the place.

O’Hurleys takes the place of the previous dive bars that resided here. The infamous Boardroom where crack was free flowing and Dukes’s Beach Bar.
O’Hurley’s is definitely a dive but I love me a good dive. We walked in after being ignored too long at Priority Public House. At first the crowd seemed a little rough around the edges and some of my party felt like maybe we didn’t belong. But after a bout 3 minutes we were all best friends with everyone.
Bartender was a pretty awesome dude and they have a jukebox that seemed to have every song in the world on it. This and the cheap prices make this my kind of place. I belong!!!

This is NOT a beach bar. There is no beach in sight unless you drive a few blocks away. Why the false name?

I went to O’Hurley’s one recent Friday on the way to The Shanty. I am always looking for a good dive bar, and since it was listed as one here on Unilocal,I thought I would give it a try.
Some observations: throwing a few disjointed knick knacks does not make you a «dive.» Nor does having a couple of flat-​screens with the Padres game playing make you a «sports bar.» And I think it is written somewhere (if not, it NEEDS to be written) that you forfeit your right to be called a dive when you charge $ 14 for two mixed drinks.
In the end, the place tries to be alot of things and simply fails.

Cool dive. Great atmosphere and the door guy was amiable. I found this place in search of another and I have a feeling I got the better end of the stick.

We stopped in O’Hurley’s to check out what it’s become since the switch. It’s a divey, local spot. It seemed like most of the people there knew each other or were at least familiar. Makes sense as a neighborhood bar. One problem was that there were a bunch of Woo Girls there. I’m not a fan of the Woo Girls. It may have been that particular night, it does stick in my mind.
We sat at the bar and waited a leetle bit too long. Not a super long time, but long enough to turn to your friend and say, «Is he going to ask us what we want?» The beer selection is ok. I mean it’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s right in the middle. They had a few Karl Strauss and Sierra Nevada caliber beers, but that doesn’t really do much for me.
My g/​f ordered a glass of wine for $ 7 or $ 8. It was a BAD glass of wine I wouldn’t pay $ 8 for a bottle of, let alone a glass. For my beer and her wine, the tab was $ 16. That’s a LOT for a dive bar. If I’m paying $ 16 for two drinks, I’ll go to any of a number of nicer places withing a 3 minute walk of O’Hurley’s and get a better quality product.
The music was loud enough you had to raise your voice to be heard by the person sitting on the stool next to you. It was also bad, bad music. It reminded me of being in Moondoggies on my 21^st birthday. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.
All of this made me really bummed. I was hoping for a neighborhood bar within (very close) walking distance from my g/f’s house. I’ll swing by again to give them another shot, but I don’t have lofty expectations. :/