The no-frill of it all
Neighborhood bar Carbon is only about nine miles from the epicenter of Hollywood, but judging from the lounge’s low-key attitude, it might as well be in a different time zone.
While so many night spots try to one-up each other with the latest and greatest, the Culver City bar’s most impressive frill is that it is utterly devoid of frills.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have assets.
From the moment you drive into Carbon’s parking lot -- yes, a parking lot -- it’s easy to see how the 2-year-old bar has earned a steadfast clientele, not to mention a high rating from the readers of City Search L.A. in the best bars category.
There is no line outside Carbon’s long, slender room, invitingly mood-lighted in red. And although Carbon offers Hollywood-caliber music -- different DJs seven nights a week, including reggae music from Delgado and Brotha Benji on Tuesday to an eclectic mix from DJ Daz every Friday -- the bar has no cover.
“There’s never a cover. We don’t believe in it,” co-owner Jason Hinton says. “When we opened up, our original idea was we didn’t want to have anything Hollywood -- no cover, no velvet rope. We wanted the door guys to be as nice as possible.”
Early on a Thursday evening, before DJ Billy Goodtimes comes in to spin a night of ‘80s funk, two TVs located above the long stainless-steel bar play a video of a Buster Keaton silent film, while co-owner Adam Noble hangs behind the bar talking with two regulars.
It is comfortable and friendly -- and, as one patron calls it, a true success story given the origins of Carbon. Hinton, a transplanted Englishman, and Noble, a New Yorker who came to L.A. to work on his acting career, met when both were working at the Room.
Having gotten tired of working for other people, the pair began to look for a bar to buy, not an easy task in L.A., apparently. “We spent a year walking around L.A. just walking into every bar like, ‘Hi, wanna sell your bar? How much?’ Actually, we had no business looking,” Noble recalls, laughing. “We’d meet every day, drink, like, 12 cups of coffee and just hit a new section of town. We went into a hundred bars or more. We got chased out of places; we went into places where nobody spoke English. It was kind of comedy.”
After a year of searching, they found the locale that would become Carbon, which at the time was a run-down place called Sloppy Joe’s. Noble says, “When we took this place over it was the saddest little crackhead sports bar you’ve ever been to.”
Hinton says that, given their money situation, taking over Sloppy Joe’s was ideal. “The whole process was to buy something that was struggling so we could turn it around, put our own touches on it,” he says.
Among the early touches was to institute regular silent movies. “We didn’t want to show sports because that brought in, like, real crazy people screaming,” Noble says. “We didn’t want people zoning out at the bar watching TV; it kills conversation. But the nice thing about the silents is, because it’s silent, you can still have music and it’s actually something to talk about ‘cause most people haven’t seen this stuff.”
Noble says people responded so well to the silent films that customers started dropping off tapes, a practice that continues today.
The next step was to get rid of the jukebox and bring in DJs. “It gives it kind of an event feel every night,” Noble says of having the DJs spin.
As Goodtimes gets behind the low podium, crafted by Hinton and Noble themselves, about 10 p.m., fans slowly start to rise from the barstools and the couch that runs against the back wall to dance. With the night moving on, and customers ordering one of Carbon’s three most popular drinks -- Jack and Coke, tequila or Corona -- the music gets progressively louder. In tune with the rising funk bass lines, the ethnically diverse crowd, most of whom are in their 20s and 30s, splits off into different factions, some going into the parking lot to smoke, others standing by the bar talking and those staying on the dance floor.
At the center of it are Hinton and Noble, who bartend together Fridays and Saturdays.
Zarani Barrow, a regular, says the pair are a big reason he keeps coming back night after night. “The owners are nice,” he says. “They’re nice enough to open up early so I can have my birthday party. That tells you the kind of people they are. When I first started coming here you could tell they were still trying to find their way a little. But it’s grown into more of a familial place. They get a lot of regulars and everyone just kind of comes, has a drink, hangs out.”
The affection between Culver City and its newest hotspot owners is definitely mutual.
“Neighborhood didn’t matter to us at first, but now that we’re here we couldn’t be happier,” Noble says. “We since both moved down here and live in the area.”
Steve Baltin can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.
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Carbon
Where: 9300 Venice Blvd., Culver City
When: 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. nightly, except Fridays, when it opens at 8
Price: No cover
Info: (310) 558-9302 or www.carbonla.com