Linda’s Light Rail Lounge

Many many fun, crazy, interesting, and weird memories at this place! (not all in the same night)
Staff are always personable.
Drinks pretty cheap.
Straight up dive bar.
Nothing beats a 3pm drink on a weekday!
Since it’s been changed to new ownership, they actually have wine and more liquor selection.

Low key, quiet place for a quiet drink. Pool table. I’ve never been here on a weekend, so it might get better. Does have wifi, though, and I run in to a lot of techies who are traveling to the valley on business. Other than that, blue collar crowd. Everyone’s chill.

This bar is the friendliest bar in Bay Area, George and Linda have done a great job to make this place what it is now. Good drinks, good crowd and great the friendliest service.
Jay

So my director of all people told me about this place and I never knew where it was until I passed by it while going to Sushi Zen one day on 1^st st for lunch. I could not believe that it was under my nose this whole time and hearing crazy stories about it I couldn’t help but be curious about what kind of place this was.
This, my friends, is an authentic dive bar. I am not a huge fan of dive bars, but this is probably as good as they get. I am only giving it three stars because IMO I’m not the hugest fan, but I find that they have a lot of interesting /​cool /​neat features as a bar /​lounge that if sticky floors and interesting characters are your things, this is definitely the place to visit!
They have a jukebox, lots of dollar bills on the walls, buy a friend a drink board and booth seats as well as bar stool areas. there is a pool table in the front and parking is nearly impossible unless you park in the hotel next door where you will have to walk through some jungle to get to Linda’s.
The prices are relatively reasonable and the bartenders are friendly but straight to the point. The crowd is everything from high end business exec to strange person in the corner who looked like he could use a shower, or three. Now you’ve been warned, so go enjoy!

when living down by the river (not in my van) i frequented this place a few times and always had a wonderful time. I remember Linda, the owner, being super friendly and I never hesitated to try to buy her or her hubby a drink. If my recollection is correct, there may have been free pool on Wednesdays? Low and behold, this joint can really kick out the more generous liberal pours. dig

Nice dive bar. Linda is the owner and bartender. Grey Goose and Tonics were good. Interesting décor. Was not very busy the night we were there Parking can be a little difficult and the place is a little hidden. Fun though. Location is great.

Classic dive bar! It’s the place my coworkers hit up since we’re over at the Doubletree. I’ve only been able to meet Linda once but she was nice. The other bartender i’ve been served by other times is a nice woman too. Good vibes are always a must! Good drink prices, clean restrooms (both women AND men’s side ;]), bar seating along with booth seating. And if you love pool, come on wednesday because it’s free! Parking sucks, but we park at the hotel next door and just walk over.

Dive bar with cool people and some really interesting looking ones. Nice pool table. Nice booth to sit and chat and to wait for your cab after a night of boozing. This is a pretty clean place for a dive bar. parking is really limited in the front. Park in the back and just go thru the back door. Good Gin and Tonic my personal choice of poison.

Found this place on Unilocal and decided to check it out one weekend with friends. We were planning on going to downtown to hit up the usual places but stopped by here first. Best idea ever!
Linda is the nicest bar lady I’ve ever come across and boy does she know how to mix some good drinks. You walk into this place and automatically it just feels like your local. We went on a Friday night and it was a pretty quite night, just us and this one other guy who thought Obama was more Mocha than Black.
She has an awesome jukebox machine with some good classics, a pool table, an electronic dart machine and some TV screens. It’s a real chill dive place to hang out and I’d recommend it to anyone to check out at least once! You’ll be wanting to go back, i promise!

Came to Linda’s after the recent Unilocal event. For some reason, after the quick ride home (Go VTA!) I wasn’t ready to go inside, so I headed to a place I always wanted to visit and stopped off at Linda’s.
Linda’s light rail lounge is just that: a bar/​lounge (really more of a bar) right in front of the Gish light rail stop. And, as a lounge should, it had a number of interesting characters, from out-​of-​towners from Texas (Austin, go horns! boo Tech!), a local girl trying to figure out what was in a «Dirty Hitler» (Jaeger, Goldshlaeger, and Rumplemintz, if you must know), a random biker (rather than an entire posse, he was quite friendly), and Linda herself, who rocks!

Top 10 Reasons Why To Go To Linda’s:
1) Linda = Biggest Sweetheart EV-​ER!
2) Her Bloody Mary’s are to die for! They don’t just have a KICK. It’s more like a ROUNDHOUSE KICK TO YOUR TASTE BUDS!
3) There’s a digital jukebox with classics like Sweet Child O Mine, Don’t Stop Believing, etc.
4) They have Fat Tire. Yey!
5) There’s a pool table that only costs $ 0.75 per game to play.
6) There’s a dart machine that I never figured out how to use, but other people did… so it’s still awesome.
7) It’s way better than being stuck in a crowded club/​bar with girls digging their heels in your leg and people spilling beer all over you.
8) They have a good happy hour deal!
9) People are cool– granted that there was only one other person there when we went, but he was… interesting. And WE were cool, so yeah, cool people were there. Haha.
10) There are signed dollar bills all over the ceiling. I forgot to ask why, but I’ll make sure to the next time I stop by.
Linda’s is a breath of fresh air from the weekend downtown SJ scene. Give it a visit! =)

Personally I am not the type that likes to go to «Dive Bars». I enjoy the scene-​and-​be-​scene atmosphere, Dj spinnin all the latest hits, while enjoying my 3 olive dirty martini!
However, Linda’s was surprisingly fun! It’s not dark and seedy as most dive bars go. It was very well light and all festive for the holidays with lights and Christmas trees. There was a digital juke box you could unload your dollars into and dance it up with Beyonce or Kanye! I asked Linda if she’d turn up the jams so i could get my dance on and she totally did!
The drinks were priced perfect for this economy, a kettle & tonic, Jack & coke and one heineken light with tip, under $ 20.
However, I think it was a ton of fun because we were celebrating friends birthday and about 95% of the folks in the bar where there for just that. So if you ever wanted to «rent out» a place to celebrate your birthday and invite a ton of people, but didn’t want to pay for any of it. This would be pure win!

I’m liken dive bars these days and last night was so much fun. We had a large group, maybe 20 people and with that size of a group it’s hard to get into places either because of lines, cover or just crowded locations. In this case, my BF lives 2 blocks from Linda’s Light Rail lounge. It was nice we were able to walk over, there were a few locals in there so we pretty much had the place to ourselves, the drinks were strong, plenty of booths, they have a pool table & music. We had the best time. If you have a large group and want to avoid the typical Saturday night crowds and waiting ten minutes for a drink… skip that and bring your crew to Linda’s. =) It was a really good time.

dive bar for the ages conveniently located as the name suggests off the light rail stop (gish i believe, but reference google in case im wrong)
pretty clean and pretty stiff drinks.
–1 star since i felt it was slightly more expensive than i would have expected, but only slightly. 3 beers + jack and coke = 17 $, which is still pretty good for the southbay.

Good place for drinking.
It is kind of tucked in between Hyde Park U-​Save and the Wyndham Hotel.
Much nicer inside than it looks on outside.
It WAS the only dive bar in San Jose that my friend Six did not know about.

After 9 months of living right across the street from Linda’s, I finally went, on a random Tuesday nite with some New Yorker friends wanting to hit a dive bar. As soon as we (late 20s, early 30s-​ers) walked in, EVERYONE at the bar (mustached, pot-​bellied men, and women with scrunchy bleach blonde hair) turned to stare at us. It was fabulous. Right away, we looked out of place, but Linda behind the counter was as cordial as any dive bartender should be. I only saw two beers on tap (Fat Tire and something else). There’s a red-​lined pool table, typical jukebox, and regular divey décor. There is a large plasma, good to know for future Sharks games. The place is surprisingly «large» for the location, with several red vinyl booths in good condition (meaning, no tears or stains). I gotta say it feels like an «upscale» dive bar, unless I need to show up on a Friday night to see the biker hoochies in leather. As my friend put it, «it’s more like a dive bar in Vegas, with brighter lights, shinier seat covers.»
Good place for being near my house. Weird crowd, but decent. Would definitely go back, after work, or on a slow weekend night.

My favorite bar of all time. I used to be two light rail stops away, but I moved recently so I’m nine stops. That doesn’t keep me away.
Why I like it. It’s a mellow place to hang for a few after work, or to close down when you’re feeling rowdy. No silly stuff like Karaōke, or live music. Just a place to drink, chill with the friendly regulars, chat with Linda, fire up some nachos, and have a few laughs.

I don’t own a car, so I love a great dive bar right across from the Light Rail stop!
Yes, no question, this place is a total dive. The clientele is pretty diverse, some after work yuppies along side some trailer park regulars.
Want some hot wings or pizza? They’re just a few minutes in the micro at this classy joint. And, in what other bar can you meet your Atkins dietary requirements with hardboiled eggs for 50 cents?
We had a great time. I would definitely recommend you check it out.

Yup, this is a dive bar alright. It is tiny, tiny, tiny and the regulars are a little on the scary side, heh. But the bartender is great. She is really sweet and remembers our group every time we come in.
They have about 4 booths and maybe a table, I’m not sure. But they also have a complimentary, mini buffet of stuff like nachos and fried chicken during happy hour.
Their drinks are reasonably priced, especially for the Bay Area and they have a few TV’s up with some sports on. There are your typical bar games sprinkled around the place too. And there is one pool table that is usually taken by a few of the regulars every time I’ve been there.
But all in all it is cool. Just go there WITH people and you’ll have a good time. ;)

It’s a dive, just like a million other dives you see around.
I went there once on a Thursday night to have a couple drinks. Myself and the bartender/​co-​owner were the only two people there for the hour or so I stuck around. The beer selection was small, but I found myself enjoying the relative quiet which allowed the bartender and I to have a decent conversation.
I found myself liking it simply because it was empty, and the beer was pretty cheap. Later I took a couple friends there and perhaps one other patron was in the bar when we got there. This second time we were kinda treated poorly by the wife/​other co-​owner who seemed to be having a bad night. My friends were not impressed in the least. I haven’t been back since, but there’s something about a quiet, unknown bar that appeals to me.