“Eat beer, drink pizza” could very well become “eat whiskey, drink beer.” The 4th Horseman in Downtown Long Beach now has a full bar.
For nearly a decade, The 4th Horseman has occupied a lane in Long Beach that no one else has really dared to touch: a horror-obsessed pizzeria where cult cinema, manic metal energy, macabre drag shows, and some of the city’s most consistently praised pies coexist under one roof. Owned by the two Jeremies—Jeremy Cross and Jeremy Schott—the DTLB institution built its identity on being happily, aggressively specific. Solid pizza. Great beer. No kids, but plenty of arcade games. And, no, they are not turning the metal music down.
Now, that identity has moved beyond beer taps and cans—and, predictably, they did not treat that expansion as an opportunity to suddenly become precious about cocktails.
Your bottle service will be a stiff pour with not a single cocktail over $12. Because this is The 4th Horseman, dammit.
“At first we joked we were only going to have Old Grand-Dad on the shelves,” Cross said, laughing. “You want a margarita? Sure, here’s Granddaddy… But sincerely: At the end of the day, we’re a dive bar. And we wanted to keep it dive bar style. Nothing fancy. We don’t have a shaker. There’s not a single martini glass in the house. And that’s the point.”
The result is a drinks list that feels exactly like the room itself: dive-bar in spirit, intentionally stripped down in execution, and fully committed to names that make first-time customers laugh, pause, or nervously point at the menu before ordering.
Even more, not a single drink on their cocktail list costs more than $12. It is a read-the-room in more ways than one: 4th Horseman’s regulars aren’t searching for craft cocktails, nor do high-end concoctions fit their brand. And, secondly, the majority of the world right now is finding that expensive cocktails, despite how well-made they are, are becoming increasingly unapproachable on the regular.
This is not an attempt to become Baby Gee or Tokyo Noir, where cocktail construction leans deeply into modern craft precision. (Though Baby Gee has one of the city’s most stellar happy hours, FYI.) The 4th Horseman’s bar program understands its mission: Keep the shelves lean. Respect the limited footprint behind the counter. And make sure the drink in your hand—not a single one costing over $12 from their menu—belongs in the same universe as the pizzas and the soundtrack.
The giddiness with which I cannot wait for someone to order the ‘I C*m Blood’ cocktail…
That means cocktails like “Street Trash”—absinthe, green chartreuse, pineapple juice, and a cherry—named after the 1987 cult horror film. Or “Casket Spray,” essentially gin and tonic with a float of St-Germain and lime. Even “Jason Takes Manhattan” stays true to the formula: rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, bitters, cherry—classic bones, horror title, no unnecessary reinvention.
And then there is the drink that may best summarize the entire philosophy: “I Cum Blood,” featuring vodka, rum, tequila, triple sec, cranberry juice, and lime juice.
Loud, inappropriate, impossible to forget, and likely one of the most aggressively branded cocktail names in Long Beach right now. The title, borrowed from Cannibal Corpse, is so committed to shock-value absurdity that merely ordering it out loud becomes part of the experience. In another room, it might feel forced. Here, under horror posters and skeletons, it somehow feels inevitable.
That same energy runs through the rest of the menu: Frankenhooker, Leatherface, Brujeria, Brimstone… And yes, there’s even a Pizza Shot made with vodka, ranch, pizza sauce, and a pepperoni garnish—less a mixology statement than a dare-turned-menu item.
The 4th Horseman knows exactly who it is.
But that is precisely why it works. Long Beach has long understood the value of bars that do not over-explain themselves. There is a reason that The Reno Room opens at 6AM. From old-school pours to neighborhood dives where atmosphere matters more than garnish, drinking culture here has long favored places that know who they are.
And that may be why this move feels like a natural extension rather than some type of a deep-rooted evolution: a horrorcore pizza institution finally adding liquor without losing a single ounce of the grit that made it matter in the first place.
The 4th Horseman is located at 121 W. 4th St.
