The Wheel

Love the wheel !! Derek the bartender is awesome an so nice ! Drinks are cheap great music. TVs every where !

Nice small friendly place to grab a couple drinks. There is also an amazing taco truck right across the street Tuesday — Saturday.
Derek kicks ass!

Dude runs a tight ship.

I am not a local, but I wish that I were. I’m just a good olé girl from Dallas. Yet, when I was there, they made me feel right at home! I have had the pleasure to patron this establishment on a number of occasions. It was always a great time… good people, great service, stiff drinks & groovin music as long as u have enough bills to fill the jukebox! I was on the arm of (in my opinion) the devilishly handsome REGULAR named Cody. (Talk him up if u get the chance… he is NOT for the faint of heart! He’s a bit of an enigma… a cross between The Dude, Sam Elliot & Sean Connery ;)) I met a few more lovely gentleman by the names of Les, Mike & many more… too many to mention! If u r in the area & looking to add a memorable notch in your proverbial belt… stop on in… u won’t b sorry!

Great local dive bar. The drinks are cheap and strong, the service is friendly, and the crowd is laid back. There is a mix of older people as well as young. Weekends can get fairly busy as the bar itself is small. I prefer weekdays because it is very low key and more intimate (if that is possible for a dive). I have been coming here for awhile now and this bar is mine and my friends favorite place to escape reality in the SGV. I recommend this bar to anyone who is not pretentious and enjoys strong drinks for only a little bit of money.

Worst dive bar in a town !!!

Im a picky person when it comes to anything as a memo. So me and my boyfriend felt spontaneous to go to The Wheel which we commute by everyday.
First impression it smells like cigaret and I left smelling like it too. They do smoke inside…
Second the bartender was not rude at all and I would have tipped if I had money left over from the drinks.
This place isnt bad they had rock music playing and most of the people are 30s-​40s…

I like this place because it is upbeat but not wild. It is an older crowd but I like that. I am 22 and I enjoy the company of older, more mature people who like to chat are not looking to get wasted or hook up. If you are easily entertained, this is just a fun place to come with good company and enjoy cheap drinks. Be warned though, you will smell like an ashtray when you leave.

i thought i wrote a review for this place? oh well…
since ive been 21 ive been coming here. used to be my favorite watering hole when i lived in the area. The Wheel is the best bar with the best prices. its a TINY place that used to let you smoke in there and i hope they still do. thats what i love about covina, a majority of the bars let you smoke inside.
super super super small and super super super cheap. it’s next to a motorcycle shop i think. there is always bad ass choppers next door and outside. pool table, jukebox, and an awesome staff there. bathroom could be better and parking kinda sucks but they have cameras there. the parking lot… not the bathrooms. i hope.
the crowd can be hot or miss. but on the right night its le pièce de résistance! i just wish this bar were a little bit bigger.
WARNING! there is one weird thing. they have a minimum for credit/​debit card purchases. you have to spend at least (i think) $ 10 of money or they will charge you $ 10 anyways and give you the difference in lotto tickets. which could potentially be good, but still its «weird» for a first timer. enjoy.

Best dive bar around. Good people, good drinks, good prices.
I always have a good time here. When it gets packed Derek (or Derick? the bar tender) will get your drinks out FAST. He is literally the only person behind the bar serving dozens of people within a minute or two. He’s also a pretty cool dude.
Oh yeah, its a smoking bar. I don’t smoke but it doesnt bother me. I know for some people it would be something to whine about.

We go to The Wheel often but we also prefer dive bars. Which this hits the spot for «Dive Bars». The drinks are cheap but STRONG! The bar tenders (we have only come across three) are very friendly! Be warned: This is a smoking bar. If you are not a smoker who also can’t stand smoke I probably wouldn’t come here. But you would be missing out. They have extremely clean bathrooms and bar area. There is an Touch Tunes internet Jukebox, a pool table, a dart board, and one of those arcade golf games. While it can get extremely busy in there we have never once had a problem with any of the people there. In fact they might even call you over and buy you a shot! If you like to have a fun cheap time while meeting new people I’d give this little hidden gem a try!

Cheap drinks, Smokey environment, super chill. Like its a dive bar. Or rather what a dive bar around here SHOULD be.

Cheap drinks, on the nicer side of «dive», cool bartender… but, I could’ve done without the indoor smoking. Some beer on tap would’ve been nice, too.

The Wheel’s flashing neon sign beckoning patrons to come in for «cocktails and dancing» fascinated me as a kid growing up in Covina. It sound sophisticated and glamorous. I imagined women in dresses and heels exchanging witty banter with men in sharp suits. I longed to go to The Wheel for cocktails and dancing. Unfortunately, it’s just a dive bar.
The Wheel have the prosaic façade of a good dive: an ugly dark interior, the lingering smell of recent cigarette smoke, and cheap drinks. However it lacks the heart of a good dive bar. You mainly will find local young adults getting drunk but not much else. No interesting character waxing eloquently on the virtues of the good old days or even a single unwashed conspiracy theorist. It’s a decent dive bar if you just want a cheap drink.

Perhaps my favorite «dive» in the San Gabriel Valley. I haven’t ranked them (yet?), but this place made me want to just so I could put it at the top.
You’ll be greeted in the parking lot by a couple of guys tinkering with a Harley and a man at the door smoking and looking at me a my girlfriend… he seemed curious, and maybe just a touch defensive. It’s ok though, I’m on his turf. He’s probably been coming to this bar for 20 years, so I gave him a respectful nod, smile, and hello… and then through the door into the blueish haze of cigarette smoke.
All my drinks were strong and cheap… I mean I could NOT have poured them better myself, and they were like $ 3.50 each. People seemed more curious about you than anything, not like the hostility you can get in lots of dive bars. Everyone was mellow, doing their thing and drinking their drink.
Décor is clean and recently updated. Nice tile floors, nice tables and chairs… Jose is right, it’s probably just a few steps up from being a dive bar. Most of the bars still around in CA that let you smoke inside are gross and have that old stain ridden blue indoor-​outdoor style carpet on the floor… not this place! Couple of TV’s above the bar. There’s one pool table, and the internet jukebox. The bartender turned it up when I played the Buzzcocks, and everyone seemed ok with a little bit of that mixed in with the Journey and REO Speedwagon and Boston that was on heavy rotation.
The bathroom was DIVINE by dive bar standards. I was absolutely terrified of using it, but when I walked it was clean, it was NOT flooded, the door locked, and there was toilet paper! After I’d prepared myself for the worst, I felt like I was in a 5-​star restaurant’s restroom!
Next time you’re driving down Arrow Highway thinking «I’ve always wanted to stop there…» DO IT! Don’t wait a year like I did. It’s too cool to miss.
Warnings:
–The parking lot can get quite packed, be prepared to park on the street BEHIND them and walk in.
–Secondhand smoke is hazardous to your health and you’ll certainly be getting plenty of it in here, so don’t bother coming if you can’t at least TOLERATE people smoking inside.

Like other reviews state, this is a fantastic dive bar. In short, good cheap drinks, clean, and smoker friendly.
From the moment you park around the brightly illuminated red sign you will understand that this is a no-​nonsense establishment. Parking was packed at the bar itself, but there is plenty of room on the street behind the bar. By the time my party arrived the entrance had a faint haze of smoke, and we could hear rock classics from the 70’s.
Inside the bar there are TVs with news and sports, a pool table, jukebox, and plenty of tables and seats. I ordered a jack and coke for a splendid price of 3.50. The only thing better than a cheap drink is a strong cheap drink, and the bartender did not play around when it came to the liquor. I’ll be sure to come back purely for this reason.
The crowd at The Wheel is typical of dive bars; locals of all ages, shapes and forms sit side by side to enjoy the comforts of friends, drinks, and light entertainment. It became clear to my party that many of the patrons of The Wheel are drinking buddies at the very least, and the comradery that follows was all in good taste.
Other things to note, the bathrooms were in the best possible state all things considered. Small, and surprisingly clean when compared to other dive bars. The beer menu may not attract the avid beer connoisseur, but they had the very basics in the bottle from what I saw.

This place is good if you just want to drink and want to be in a small space with other people hollering back & forth. It wasn’t a good experience for me, and along with the people smoking inside, I won’t be returning.

The wheel has been good to me. Cynthia, a bartender on the weekends during the day is a sweetheart and the pool table is usually open for me to play on. They have a pretty modern juke box that has pretty much any song you want and the drinks are always priced more than fairly. Thank you wheel for always being open when i have an itch for pool. =)

Now this is a Barflys’ dream.$ 2.50 Beers & plenty of Booze. Loose atmosphere, nice looking Bartender. Beware lots of regulars there.
It also has a funky shaped Bar.

Beware! Beware the curse of The Wheel! The curse will make your alarm clock not work the next morning and you will wake up at 8:15 when you have to be at work at 8:30. The curse will erase your memory of how you got home! The curse will make you feel like shit and fall asleep at your desk the next day.
Disclaimer: The curse may actually be caused by overconsumption of alcohol and sleeping through the alarm or quite possibly snoozing it over and over… and a big fat hangover.