Adam Johnson has become a football fan by accident.
During a family visit to London, Johnson's brother-in-law held him a Tottenham jacket. And when he put his hand in one of the pockets, he found two tickets for a Spurs match.
At the time, Johnson may have preferred a radicular channel to a football match, but he still continued. The experience turned out to change life.
“It was really exciting,” he said. “The fans blade me. The song and the atmosphere, it was so incredible that I was on board right away.”
Last spring, Johnson, 44, and his wife Clarice, 39, found a way to draw on this football fever on this side of the pond, opening an ass restaurant city they called N17 The wayA name each supporter of Tottenham will recognize. N17 is the postal code of the Northern London district of Haringy, where the club is located, while the track refers to White Hart Lane, the emblematic stadium that housed the Spurs for 118 years.
Their strategy, one might say, was modeled after the intrigue of “Field of Dreams” – if you build it, they will come. And it worked. A month after the opening of the small restaurant on the ground floor of a complex of luxury apartments, it was filled with football fans. Two additional dozen blocked the sidewalk outside to look through the windows to watch the final of the European championship on five televisions on the big screen.
“This is the atmosphere we want,” said Johnson. “Standing up. Standing (side), looking out the window.”
Football is part of the sports bars scene in southern California for years. But for a large part of this time British style pubs such as Fox & Hounds at Studio City, Ye Olde Kings Head And the recently closed cock 'Bull in Santa Monica was mainly aimed at small groups of expatriates who could not get cable television games.
It started to change when ESPN and Fox began to broadcast European football widely. The main clubs responded with summer tours from the United States and that more bars and restaurants started to open early in the morning to show the games, the supporters' groups rewarded them by gathering in large numbers.
SO Joxer Daly's in Culver City has become a bar in Liverpool, the Auld Dubliner Long Beach houses the gooners of Bay City, a group of arsenal fans, while O'malley is on the main In Seal Beach has been the territory of Chelsea for five seasons.
Fans of Tim Jester and Tottenham at N17 The Lane at Culver City cannot believe that a Manchester United player has not obtained a yellow card by watching a match.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The culture of the football bar had another major push when LaFC began playing in 2018. The brand's energy and community department of the club made a priority to recruit restaurants across southern California to show the team games, by good with a club swag if they did.
Six years later, Laftc At 77 bar partners recorded in four counties, some who organize well -frequented visualization parties and others, such as N17, which revealed three fans to watch a recent road match.
“The is a cultural hub and football is everywhere,” said Jimmy Lopez who, as director of the brand and the LAFC community, has helped develop team partnerships. “This sport is not what it was 10 years ago. I was surprised to see how many bars stretched my hand. It is propagated by word of mouth and it is really cool to see it develop alone.”
Creating this sense of community around Premier League football is even more important given the launch times early in the morning in southern California.
“You build these small subcultures,” said Lopez. “Football is better when you look at it with people who are the same team as you. You sing songs and have a good time.
“You want to be with individuals sharing the same ideas. You want to rise to five and escape reality during these 90 minutes and have a good time. It's just a pleasure.”
Six month old Conor hangs out with his parents Jimmy and combines while watching a Tottenham Hotspurs match at N17 The Lane at Culver City.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Given Lopez's passion and knowledge about the culture of local fans, he was the first person that Johnson contacted when he opened N17. He is still waiting for a response from Tottenham.
“We contacted them and it was difficult,” he said. “They never came back to us. We tried several times and then we just (said) that we are going to go.”
N17 is not a typical sporting joint. It does not look like a man cave or a wardrobe in that there are no pennants, football scarves or sports memories hanging on the wall, just a few bobbles of Tottenham solitary behind the bar. It is not an Irish Ersatz pub with a lot of dark wood, touches of green and a Guinness mirror either. Instead, the decor is sparse, the room is brilliant and airy, and there are small patio tables aligned on the sidewalk in the hope of a crowd of overflow.
But it was the European championship last summer and American copaNot Tottenham or Lafc, which attracted the first big crowd of N17 and put the bar on the football card in Southern California.
“It has roughly kept our doors open,” said Johnson.
However, the Spurs kept this momentum.
“I do not receive a big crowd for another match,” said Johnson, sitting at a patio table outside the restaurant, dressed in a t-shirt and a worn short gray spurs despite a cold in late September. “When Tottenham plays, they come.”
Johnson said that he and his wife had sank about half a million dollars in N17 and that has made him profits every month since their opening. But it was not easy.
“This is the most difficult thing I have ever done,” said Johnson, who believes that he works 100 hours a week, mainly for a reason: “So we can watch the match and other people may have a place to come and watch the match.”
“It was just a passion,” he added. “It's just the love of football, football.”
