AKBAR.
Passing the Tiara
Akbar is Sold to its Managers.
The iconic queer space is set in loving hands.
AKBAR, everyone’s favorite Silver Lake hangout and dance bar, is under new ownership. After 27 years, owners Scott Craig and Peter Alexander have sold the beloved bar to their managers, Albert Loya and David LeBarron, in the spirit to keep Akbar… well, Akbar.
In 1996 Scott and Peter bought Joley’s II, a gay piano bar. They bought it with a desire to have a cool place to hang out with their friends. 27 years later – with AKBAR now an iconic watering hole of Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and albeit the world – they have sold it to the two people who pulled Akbar out of the pandemic and who have a long history of living and loving on that corner of Sunset and Fountain.
David started working the door in 1998 to make a little extra money on the weekends and soon saw the potential for a vital theatrical space. Likewise, Albert Loya, a Lynwood local, started at Akbar during the last writers’ strike to make some money barbacking. Soon the two became fast friends and together rode the ranks from part-time to bartenders to managers and, today, owners of Akbar. It is their mission to honor the tradition of keeping Akbar a welcoming, creative, alternative space for queer and queer allies in Silver Lake, in Los Angeles and beyond.
A Queer History.
by Andrew Henkes PhD
For nearly 30 years, Akbar has proudly been “a neighborhood oasis” – and has refused to be defined by a single aesthetic or group of people. Long-running events have included Dirty Dirty House Club, Craft Night, Bears in Space, Planet Queer, Drunk on Stage, and even the Rock Steady ska & reggae night. Patrons love our Halloween contests and free New Year’s Eve parties. But even more than the amazing list of parties and performances, Akbar is about community … it’s a space for people to come together to enjoy a strong drink and a great jukebox.
Akbar was born on December 31, 1996, during a tough time for gay bars. Silver Lake had long been a center for gay bars in Los Angeles, but, between gentrification & AIDS, several had closed by the mid-90s. Silver Lake resident Scott Craig worried that gay venues in Silver Lake would continue to close unless locals stepped in to secure them. So, after hearing in 1996 that Jolie’s #2, a hole-in-the-wall piano bar, was up for sale, Craig made an offer to buy the business.
The building on the corner of Fountain and Sunset had housed gay bars at least since the 1970s. Before Jolie’s #2, entrepreneur Lee Caldarelli had operated a Western-themed gay bar called the Silver Dollar Saloon (1976-1986) downstairs with the Silver Saddle Spa bathhouse upstairs. Craig knew the space well because he had DJ’d at the Silver Dollar years earlier.
Craig secured investors and ex-boyfriend Peter Alexander became his business partner. After getting the keys on December 12, 1996 the group worked furiously to get the bar reopened before the end of the year – they wanted to be able to say it opened in 1996. They also wanted “bar” in the name and came up with Akbar because it would appear earlier in listings starting with an “A” and Akbar meant “great” … not a gay bar or a straight bar, but a “great” bar!
Akbar is a part of a long queer history in Silver Lake. The neighborhood had been a colony for artists, political dissidents, and homosexuals since its early days. The section previously known as Edendale next to the neighborhood’s eponymous reservoir used to be called “The Swish Alps.”
Decades later, there was a vibrant gay nightlife world along Hyperion Ave and Sunset Blvd, documented by the signs that once warned against cruising in the neighborhood. When the LAPD raided the Black Cat Tavern on New Year’s Eve 1966, local activists brought in over 600 hundred people to protest the raid weeks later, making it the biggest documented protest for gay rights in the country at that time.
In the ‘70s when tensions grew as the neighborhood saw more Latino/a families moving in, residents of Sunset Junction came together to strategize ways to ease the friction between the different communities – and they decided to throw a party. The Sunset Junction Street Fair starting in 1980 brought together leather men and parents pushing strollers to enjoy music and support local businesses.
Akbar is proud to call Silver Lake our home.
Our History.
Poster Gallery.
