Liz's favorite pub

Beloved icon Elizabeth Taylor was laid to rest today in a private service at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, Calif. — the same cemetery where her friend Michael Jackson was buried — a day after she died of congestive heart failure. The service caught most people off-guard, a blessing since it means that the whack-a-doodles from Westboro Baptist had no chance to get to Glendale to protest at the funeral like they said they planned to do.
Dame Elizabeth’s family has said there will be public memorial service for the star at a later date, but the tribute began at her favorite hangout in West Hollywood since news of her death, at age 79, became public on Wednesday. And that favorite hangout, by the way, is a gay bar.
Taylor first started hanging out at The Abbey about five or six years ago, and according to this report in The New York Times, she told the owner it was her favorite pub. The bar, in fact, had become something of a tourist attraction because people knew that she was a regular.
Since her death, the Abbey has set up a memorial tribute to Taylor that is drawing a crowd of mourners. The tribute, set up in what the bar has long called the Elizabeth Taylor Room, includes the huge framed portrait of herself Taylor donated to the bar, several floral arrangements and, on a nearby table, a Blue Velvet martini, made with vodka and blueberry schnapps and named in honor of her 1944 film National Velvet.