Weeks After the Thousand Oaks Shooting, Country Bar's Regulars Reunite for a Two-Step and That Old Borderline Warmth

Ben Ginsburg, 23, of Woodland Hills and Kylie Rice, 19, of Simi Valley dance at Borderline Country Night at The Canyon bar. On Thursday, more than a thousand people — including many survivors — gathered for the first night of line dancing since the Borderline bar closed. [Photo: Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times]

Borderline Bar and Grill was a place you could go to dance away your worries.

Even after what happened there last month, regulars still wanted to do that together — so they met up and danced in parking lots, in backyards, in a barn, at the mall.

Borderline’s brown stucco building has been off limits since Nov. 7, when a local former Marine stormed the Thousand Oaks bar and 13 people, including the shooter, died. The walkway leading up to it has become a giant memorial, with wreaths, American flags, pumpkins, cowboy boots, teddy bears and a Christmas tree with stockings for each victim.

The front door is behind a chain-link fence. The windows people frantically jumped through to escape are boarded up with plywood.

For the first time since the shooting, the owner of Borderline Bar and Grill hosted a dance for his old customers. Borderline’s brown stucco building in Thousand Oaks has been off limits since the shooting Nov. 7. Instead, on Thursday, more than 1,000 people — including many survivors and parents of some victims — gathered in their cowboy boots eight miles east in Agoura Hills, in a bar called The Canyon. But as the music played and the room filled, many felt the old Borderline warmth. Esmeralda Bermudez covers the story for the Los Angeles Times.