Adam Johnson became a soccer fan by accident.
During a visit with family in London, Johnson’s brother-in-law handed him a Tottenham jacket. And when he put his hand in one of the pockets, he found two tickets to a Spurs’ game.
At the time Johnson may have preferred a root canal to a soccer game, but he went along anyway. The experience proved life-changing.
“It was just really exciting,” he said. “The fans blew me away. The singing and the atmosphere, it was just so incredible that I was on board right away.”
Last spring Johnson, 44, and his wife Clarice, 39, found a way to tap into that soccer fever on this side of the pond, opening a Culver City restaurant they called N17 The Lane, a name every Tottenham supporter will recognize. N17 is the postcode for the North London borough of Haringey, where the club is located, while The Lane refers to White Hart Lane, the iconic stadium that was home to the Spurs for 118 years.
Their strategy, you might say, was modeled after the plot of “Field of Dreams” — if you build it, they will come. And it worked. A month after the tiny restaurant opened on the ground floor of a luxury apartment complex it was filled with soccer fans. Another two dozen blocked the sidewalk outside to peer through the windows to watch the European Championship final on five big-screen TVs.
“This is the vibe that we want,” Johnson said. “Standing room. Standing out[side], watching through the window.”
Soccer has been a part of the sports-bar scene in Southern California for years. But for much of that time British-style pubs such as The Fox & Hounds in Studio City, Ye Olde Kings Head and the recently closed Cock ‘N’ Bull in Santa Monica catered primarily to small groups of expats who couldn’t get the games on cable TV.
That began to change when ESPN and Fox began widely airing European soccer. Major clubs responded with summer barnstorming tours of the U.S. and as more bars and restaurants began to open in the early morning hours to show the games, supporters’ groups rewarded them by gathering in larger and larger numbers.
So Joxer Daly’s in Culver City became a Liverpool bar, the Auld Dubliner in Long Beach is home to the Bay City Gooners, an Arsenal fan group, while O’Malley’s on Main in Seal Beach has been Chelsea territory for five seasons.
Tim Jester and Tottenham fans at N17 The Lane in Culver City can’t believe a Manchester United player didn’t get a yellow card while watching a match.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The soccer-bar culture got another major push when LAFC began play in 2018. The club’s energetic brand and community department made a priority of recruiting restaurants across Southern California to show the team’s games, showering them with club swag if they did.
Six years later, LAFC has 77 registered bar partners in four counties, some who stage well-attended viewing parties and others, like N17, who had three fans show up to watch a recent road game.
“L.A. is a cultural hub and football is everywhere,” said Jimmy Lopez who, as LAFC’s manager of brand and community, has been instrumental in growing the team’s partnerships. “This sport is not what it was 10 years ago. I was surprised at how many bars reached out. So it’s spreading by word of mouth and it’s really cool just seeing it develop on its own.”
Creating that sense of community around Premier League soccer is even more important given the early morning kickoff times in Southern California.
“You build these little subcultures,” Lopez said. “Football is best when you watch it with people that are the same team as you. You sing songs and have a good time.
“You want to be with like-minded individuals. You want to high-five each other and just escape reality for those 90 minutes and have a great time. It’s just straight fun.”
Six-month-old Conor hangs out with his parents Jimmy and Allie while watching a Tottenham Hotspurs game at N17 The Lane in Culver City.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Given Lopez’s passion and knowledge about the local fan culture, he was the first person Johnson contacted when he opened N17. He’s still waiting for a response from Tottenham.
“We did contact them and it was hard,” he said. “They never got back to us. We tried a few different times and then we just [said] we’re going to go for it.”
N17 isn’t a typical sports joint. It doesn’t look like a man cave or a locker room in that there are no pennants, soccer scarves or sports memorabilia hanging from the wall, just a couple of lonely Tottenham bobbleheads behind the bar. Nor is it an ersatz Irish pub with lots of dark wood, touches of green and a Guinness mirror. Instead the décor is sparse, the room is bright and airy, and there are small patio tables lined up on the sidewalk in the hopes of an overflow crowd.
But it was last summer’s European Championship and Copa América, not Tottenham or LAFC, that pulled in N17’s first big crowds and put the bar on the soccer map in Southern California.
“That pretty much kept our doors open,” Johnson said.
However, it was the Spurs that kept that momentum going.
“I don’t get a big crowd for any other match,” said Johnson, sitting at a patio table outside the restaurant, clad in a worn gray Spurs T-shirt and shorts despite a late September chill. “When Tottenham’s playing, they come.”
Johnson said he and his wife have sunk about half a million dollars into N17 and have made a profit every month since they opened. But it hasn’t been easy.
“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” said Johnson, who estimates he works 100 hours a week, mostly for one reason: “So we can watch the game and other people can have a place to come watch the game.”
“It was just a passion,” he added. “It’s just the love of football, of soccer.”
