Peter Alexander (left) and Scott Craig opened Akbar on New Years Eve in 1996. Photo by Patrick McPheron.
Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, long before it was a hipster haven replete with cheese stores and upscale coffee shops, Silver Lake was a center for L.A.’s gay leather community. That all began changing in the ‘90s, and the chipping away at that subculture has continued ever since.
Over the past several years, many gay bars elsewhere in L.A. have slowly started shuttering. In 2013, the West Hollywood lesbian bar The Palms bid farewell after 48 years. More recently, the New Jalisco Bar, a safe haven for queer Latinos, has been threatened with demolition permits in fast-gentrifying downtown L.A.; although it’s safe for now, ownership has voiced uncertainty about the bar’s future. A few new gay bars have sprung up in gentrifying DTLA, including Redline and Precinct, but many have seen the rise of Grindr, Scruff and other gay hook-up apps — which allow queers to meet without ever entering a queer-only space — as the gay bar’s death knell, particularly the gay dive bar.
Meanwhile, Akbar is thriving after 20 years, thanks in no small part to a diverse scene that spans generations, welcomes young creatives and still offers a safe space for older gay folks. It’s an inclusive atmosphere by design. When owners Scott Craig and Peter Alexander (along with a third partner and his wife) opened the bar in the mid-’90s, the idea was to have a hangout that was obviously gay-leaning — rainbow flag out front and all — but was a bit more mixed than the strictly gay male-only bars they were familiar with.
Read the full story on LA Weekly: http://www.laweekly.com/arts/how-akbar-has-managed-to-stay-open-and-relevant-for-20-years-in-a-gentrifying-neighborhood-7506298
