Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace from “Ingrid Goes West”

Ingrid Goes West is perhaps the most topically poignant movie I’ve ever seen!  Centering around Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza), a fragile young woman who picks up and moves from Pennsylvania to L.A. in the hopes of ingratiating herself into the life of influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), the 2017 black comedy highlights the pitfalls of social media and the dangers of buying into the illusory nature of Instagram.  I first learned about the film (which is available to rent or purchase on Amazon and free for subscribers on Hulu) thanks to our friends Kim and Katie who visited us in Palm Springs last May.  (That’s me and Katie pictured above.)  On their flight to the desert, they watched Ingrid Goes West and were shocked when just a few days later, the Grim Cheaper and I brought them to Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, one of our favorite local spots, to grab a bite to eat.  As it turns out, the Joshua Tree watering hole made a prominent appearance in the flick.  Upon learning the news, the saloon went right onto my To-Blog List.  But when I finally sat down to write about it this week, I could not find any of the photos I had taken on my many visits.  So Kim and Katie were kind enough to loan me theirs for this post.

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The GC and I first discovered Pioneertown shortly after moving to Palm Springs in early 2013.  Consisting of a small array of ramshackle wooden structures dotted along a patch of dusty road, the unique desert enclave was the brainchild of a team of Hollywood heavyweights including Bud Abbott, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Dale Evans who came up with the innovative idea to build a “living, breathing movie set” in a semi-desolate area easily accessible from L.A.  In 1946, the group purchased 32,000 acres of land a few miles northwest of downtown Yucca Valley and, thus, Pioneertown was born.

The buildings erected included a jail, stables, a bank, a grocer, a restaurant, a barn, an ice cream parlor, a bowling alley, a shooting gallery, and a saloon known as the “Cantina.”  It was that spot that would later become Pappy & Harriet’s.  But more on that in a bit.

Each of the structures was not only practical, meaning both the interior and exterior could be utilized for filming, but functional as well.  The bowling alley façade actually housed a working bowling alley, the ice cream parlor contained an operational ice cream parlor, and actors filming on the premises could hang out in the spaces between takes.

  There was even a motel on the premises where cast and crew could stay during a shoot.

As Atlas Obscura explains the extraordinary site, “Its remote location made it more efficient to build era-appropriate lodgings for the talent right there on set, creating a tiny but functional town that served as both a shooting location and an unincorporated community village.”

Pioneertown took off and countless productions like The Cisco Kid, The Range Rider, The Gene Autry Show, Annie Oakley, and Judge Roy Bean made use of the locale throughout its first two decades.  When Westerns fell out of favor with audiences in the late ‘60s, though, filmings on the premises began to dry up until eventually the place sat vacant and forgotten.

Then in 1972, a woman named Francis Aleba came along, purchased the Cantina space and transformed it into a burrito/biker bar.  The rousing joint, which you can see images of here and here, was popular with desert denizens and people passing through from the get-go.  When Francis wanted to retire ten years later, her daughter, Harriet, took over the place and with husband, Claude “Pappy” Allen, re-opened it as Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, a restaurant/bar/live music venue.

Countless bands showed up to play and Pappy and Harriet, musicians themselves, even graced the stage most nights.

After Pappy passed away in 1994, Harriet sold the bar to a friend, who wound up selling it herself a few years later.  The menu changed, as did the décor and the clientele, and the musical acts eventually dried up.  When Robyn Celia and Linda Kranz, longtime fans of the eatery who lived in New York, learned the place was for sale yet again in 2003, they decided the only thing to do was relocate to the high desert, snatch it up, and restore it back to its honky-tonk heyday.  The watering hole quickly took off once more.

Former patrons returned in droves and new people discovered the place.

Today, Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace is as popular as ever, thanks to its fabulous fare, unique décor, and excellent musical lineup.  Just a few of the acts who have graced the venue’s stage include Rufus Wainwright, Robert Plant, the Artic Monkeys, Sean Lennon, Lorde, Kesha, Cracker, and, most famously, Paul McCartney who played an impromptu gig there in October 2016 while in the area for Desert Trip.

Pappy & Harriet’s has even attracted its fair share of celeb fans, like Helen Mirren, Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Brody Jenner, and Eric Szmanda, who have all been spotted dining on the premises.

Thanks to is whimsical aesthetic, it is no surprise that the place has showed up onscreen.  (Though Pioneertown is, obviously, a Hollywood stalwart, as well, I thought it best to focus solely on Pappy & Harriet’s many cameos for this post.  I promise to do a write-up on Pioneertown itself soon.)

In Ingrid Goes West, Taylor takes Ingrid to Pappy & Harriet’s for a wild night out while in Joshua Tree (ahem, #JTree) for a brief visit.  As the incredibly vapid Taylor describes the place twice in film (first to Ingrid and later to a fellow influencer), “Pappy’s is the best.  I mean, like, the crowd, it is a bit sketch, but they always have great live music and the best desert vibes.”

In a later scene, Taylor publishes a fake Instagram post alluding to being at the restaurant and Ingrid shows up in an attempt to talk to her and patch things up.

Pappy & Harriet’s is also where Ted Smith (Clive Turner) gets a job upon arriving in Pioneertown in 1995’s massively panned direct-to-video horror flick The Howling: New Moon Rising.

The eatery portrays a café known as “Last Chance” in the 1999 movie of the same name.

Anthony Bourdain and his friend Josh Homme pop by Pappy & Harriet’s, which he describes as being “out in the a**-end of nowhere,” in the Season 7 episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations titled “U.S. Desert,” which aired in 2011.

Pappy & Harriet’s was also supposedly featured in Jeopardy, but I scanned through the 1953 thriller and didn’t see it anywhere.  Being that the locale has likely been altered significantly since that time, though, it is possible I just didn’t recognize it.

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Big THANK YOU to my friends Kim and Katie for providing all of the photos that appear in this post. 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, from Ingrid Goes West, is located at 53688 Pioneertown Road in Pioneertown.  You can visit the watering hole’s official website here.