Akbar's owners David LeBarron & Albert Loya are profiled as "Queer Leaders" in the Louis Vuitton City Guide: Los Angeles.

iHeartRadio - The Fork Report
Interview with David LeBarron:
AKBAR and the Slate of Pride Programming in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, left, talks with AT Center Board President Korey Wyatt after the removal of anti-gay signs first put up in the 1990s to discourage men from cruising in the Silver Lake neighborhood.

There are only so many overpriced vodka sodas and blonde-haired boy bots you can handle in West Hollywood before you start actively Googling flights out of town. Put your phone away, and go to Akbar.

It’s 8:30 a.m., and I am silently sitting in Akbar, the bar I co-own—a small gay oasis in Los Angeles where Sunset meets Fountain meets Hoover. I play a favorite track on the jukebox and this sometimes crazy public space where community is daily forged starts to come to life.

Back in the early 90s, Scott Craig and Peter Alexander were living in Silver Lake, going to live shows and throwing parties. Their love of punk rock and parties and their desire to create a bar where gay and straight people could party together inspired them to buy a defunct piano bar and transform it into what is now known as Akbar.