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The fun thing about having out-of-town visitors stay with me is they give me an excuse to go out and enjoy L.A. nightlife. Sure, lately my life has consisted of lounging around my apartment in sweats, eating cereal for dinner, and going to bed by 10:30 p.m., but I can’t let my guests – especially ones from the East Coast – think that’s the best the city has to offer.

When my sister, who turned 21 last month, came to visit me recently, I was excited by the prospect of being able to take her out in Los Angeles. Anyone who’s been following what Jake Tracer calls my “627 columns straight about alcohol” knows that the suburb I grew up in, where my sister still lives, doesn’t have a whole lot to offer when it comes to going out.

As someone who prefers not to spend a lot of my time at trendy and pretentious Sunset clubs or super-touristy bars (the neon lights and out-of-state crowd at City Walk are the equivalent of the ninth circle of hell to me), I usually take my guests to bars I think are fun and casual.

Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that what’s “fun and casual” to me is usually awkward and not so fun for someone who neither goes to UCLA nor knows anyone there.

With many of my out-of-town visitors, like my sister, I typically start off their visit by taking them to that favorite UCLA bar, Maloney’s. They’re usually horrified by the dark interior and mass of hammered undergraduate students. I’m also pretty sure my guests tend to drink more than they should to have a good time among people who go to a different school than they do, which usually results in a less than ideal night out.

When I asked my sister where she wanted to go the next night, she informed me, “Anywhere but Maloney’s.” And when Allison, a friend from Northwestern, took her first trip to California to visit me a few months ago, we were left so debilitated the next day that we couldn’t do more than sit on my couch and moan about how we felt as we watched a “The Girls Next Door” marathon on MTV. So much for being able to show people the city in the daytime.

For my sister’s second night, I decided to take her to Q’s, which I assured her was way better than Maloney’s. When our cab pulled up, I realized that while I’ve gone to Q’s a lot, I’d never gone on a Saturday night before. I then learned that you actually had to wait in line halfway down the block to get in. Q’s is fun, but not that fun.

My sister suggested that if we were going to wait in line, we should at least go to a club instead of a sports bar on Sunset. That ultimately would have been the better decision, especially since we only had an hour left by the time we got inside, I didn’t recognize anyone there, and people kept asking me with shocked expressions, “You took her to Q’s for her last night in Los Angeles?”

When Allison was here I made the similar mistake of taking her to Temple Bar, another place I like, without actually checking the schedule to see what the entertainment was for the evening. When I had gone there in the past, there had been a DJ playing hip-hop music and a salsa band, both of which I enjoyed. I banked on the bar to have a similar type of DJ or band, but after we each paid our $12 cover, we walked in to see the nerdiest band I’ve ever seen in my life on stage – half of them were wearing glasses and looked like they came straight from chem lab – and the crowd was full of their fellow classmates and friends – from USC. The band was OK, but it wasn’t exactly the night of dancing my friend was hoping for.

When people come to Los Angeles, they expect to experience some of the glitz and glamour that gives the city its name. Plus, local bars are really only fun when you’re a local. So the next time you host an out-of-town guest, it’s worth heading out to the Sunset Strip, as pretentious and inconvenient as you may know it is. And if they hate it, well, lucky you; you can bring them to Maloney’s the next night.

While Rodgers thinks going out on Sunset is fun once in a while, City Walk is never OK, even with guests from the East Coast. E-mail her at jrodgers@media.ucla.edu.