Brooklyn’s Mood Ring to open astrology-themed lounge in Los Angeles

Brooklyn’s Mood Ring is coming for Chinatown in Los Angeles

The astrology bar that turned ‘what’s your sign?’ into a Bushwick ritual in Brooklyn is taking the old Hong Kong Café.

For almost a decade, Mood Ring has been the Bushwick room where a stranger can ask your sign and mean it. Co-owners Vanessa Li and Bowen Goh, a Scorpio and a Gemini, best friends since before the bar, opened shop on Myrtle Avenue in New York. The duo named the place after Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, and built a front room of booths and a foggy back room that actually dances. In June their new Instagram, @moodringla, posted a still of the Chinatown storefront with the line “of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, won’t you step into mine?” The second Mood Ring is headed for Gin Ling Way.

The Brooklyn bar’s signature is a rotating cocktail keyed to the current sun sign, plus a menu that quotes cinema as often as the zodiac. Press and menus over the years have included a Scorpio “Sting” (mezcal, ancho chile, Campari), a ‘Mercury Retrograde,’ a ‘Days of Being Wild,’ and a ‘Tony Leung.’ Li and Goh later collected the idea in Margarita in Retrograde: Cocktails for Every Sign (Abrams). The room was built as an inclusive, friendly neighborhood bar that also books underground DJs; in late September 2026 the Myrtle Avenue original marked its ninth anniversary. A sister room, Heaven or Las Vegas, sits nearby in Bushwick.

Los Angeles is not a replica on paper. It is the same operators, the same cosmology, and a building with a much louder past.

Mood Ring LA will blend astrology, 1970s design and Hong Kong-cinema references into a cosmic interior that includes velvety booths, galaxy-inspired bar tops and tarot-card murals. The concept mirrors the Brooklyn original, where rotating zodiac cocktails such as a Scorpio-themed “The Sting” have become signature drinks. The Los Angeles location will retain that immersive, moody environment while adding Instagram-ready neon lighting and a nod to the site’s musical heritage.

The venue will sit in the Chinatown Central Plaza, taking over the former homes of Realm and Stay Zero Proof. The building previously housed the Hong Kong Cafe, a cornerstone of Los Angeles’ punk and music scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. By repurposing this historic space, Li and Goh aim to honor the neighborhood’s cultural past while introducing a modern nightlife destination that appeals to both locals and visitors.

According to a filing with the California Alcoholic Beverage Control, Mood Ring holds an active Type 48 on-sale general license (license 678902) for the premises, which authorizes the sale of alcoholic beverages to the public. The license is listed as active as of September 30 2026 and is set to expire on August 31 2027. The public-record packet can be reviewed at the ABC license lookup. The record asks for a conditional use to sell a full line of alcohol for on-site consumption inside a 2,473-square-foot entertainment venue plus a 79-square-foot courtyard. The plan shows 84 indoor seats and 8 outside, hours from noon to 2 a.m. daily, and interior work only. No demolition, no new structure, no tree removal. Council District 1. That is the operable public description. Treat menu, pricing, and the exact night the doors open as unannounced until the operators say otherwise.

What Now Los Angeles first reported the move in October 2025, citing a submission to L.A. City Planning: Li and Goh taking the former Realm and Stay Zero Proof spaces, with zodiac drinks, neon, live entertainment, patron dancing, outdoor seating, and a hoped-for 2026 debut. No public opening date has followed.

Mood Ring LA Official Website: https://www.moodringla.com