There’s a theme restaurant in Taipei where you’re locked in a jail cell, and meals arrive on metal trays slipped through a space in the bars. It’s blandly called … The Jail. There’s a theme restaurant in Las Vegas called the Heart Attack Grill where the servers wear medical garb, and the food is high-fat and high-sodium — which is to say basic Americana.

There’s also a theme restaurant in Hollywood called Beetle House, built around the films of Tim Burton. In Santa Monica, there’s a restaurant called Opaque where you’re served in the dark. In Burbank, there’s a born-again tiki bar called the Broken Compass. And, in Long Beach, there’s a Bar Collective designed to look like a back alley Chinese laundry. Or, at least, part of it is.

As for Midnight Oil in Long Beach, it’s a collection of t

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