On the night of August 19, more than a hundred people crowded into a room that didn't exist a year ago, tucked behind Lama Dog Tap Room on Santa Barbara Street. DJ Max Ville, who also built the room's speakers by hand, spun records on vinyl all night. Cocktails named after famous mullets went around: a rum and mint concoction called the Van Damm, a vodka and mango drink honoring Ziggy Stardust. By the next evening, the bar had its official open sign out front. It's called The Mullet, and it's the kind of business-in-the-front-party-in-the-back joke that only works if you already know the building.
Here's what most people walking past don't know. The Funk Zone hasn't added a single new building to fit The Mullet in. It didn't need to. The story of how this bar got here says more about how this neighborhood actually grows than any list of new restaurant openings could.
A Secret Door Behind a Taproom
The building that now houses Lama Dog and The Mullet has a strange history. Before it was part of The Waterline, the shared-space development that opened in 2016, it served as a tune-up shop for Oscar Mayer's fleet of Wienermobiles. Lama Dog moved in that same year, named after owner Pete Burnham's Tibetan Mastiff, and built its reputation on a beer list that changes daily and a bottle shop stocked with nearly 350 selections.
The space that's now The Mullet was originally built as gallery space for artists. Over the years it cycled through different uses, most recently as a room for the tech company Honey, before Burnham decided the Funk Zone had room for a vinyl bar. Architect Kevin Moore and interior designer Jessica Risko Smith turned it into a room that holds around three dozen people at cocktail tables and along the bar, with overflow space outside. There are no servers. There are no children allowed. You order at the bar, carry your drink between The Mullet and Lama Dog if you want, and bring food over from The Nook next door.
"I'm not a particular fan of gimmicks, believe it or not," Burnham told the Santa Barbara Independent. "But I couldn't help naming drinks after the most obscure people with fantastic mullets."
That's the charm of the place. But the more interesting question is how Burnham got permission to open a second full bar in a neighborhood that everyone agrees already has a parking problem.
The Law That Made It Possible
Ask anyone who's circled the Funk Zone on a Saturday night looking for a spot and they'll tell you parking is the neighborhood's one real constraint. Property owners have debated it for years. The city has floated ideas from converting Garden Street lanes into employee parking to charging for on-street spots that used to be free. None of that changed for The Mullet.
What changed was a 2023 state law that eliminated mandatory parking minimums for new development located near a major transit stop, and the Funk Zone sits an easy walk from the Amtrak station on State Street. Lama Dog's own parking allocation was already spoken for. Under the old rules, adding a second business in the same footprint would have meant finding parking that doesn't exist in a neighborhood that hasn't had room to build more since it was warehouses and lumber yards. Under the new rule, Burnham didn't have to solve that problem. He just had to lease the space.
That's the actual mechanism behind why the Funk Zone keeps feeling different every few months without ever seeming to expand outward. It isn't zoning relief or a new commercial building going up. It's existing operators finding legal room to double up inside buildings that were already full. Somewhere down the line, a separate project called The Platform will add real new square footage to the neighborhood, a proposed two-story building with curved rooflines and a central courtyard replacing an industrial lot, still working its way through the city's planning process. But The Mullet is a preview of the faster, cheaper version of neighborhood change: same walls, same lease, new door in the back.
What You'll Actually Find at The Mullet
If you're planning a night out, here's what to expect. The bar keeps Lama Dog's hours except on Tuesdays, when it's closed entirely:
- Wednesday and Thursday, 4 p.m. to 11 p.m.
- Friday and Saturday, noon to 12:30 a.m.
- Sunday and Monday, noon to 10 p.m.
The drink menu is overseen by mixologists Jesus Munoz and Gustavo "Goose" Bello, with manager Brandon Hedbkin running the floor. Beyond the mullet-themed cocktails there's a full lineup of beer, wine, and nonalcoholic options, plus whiskey if that's your speed. Burnham says the cocktail list will rotate seasonally, so the current roster of drinks named after Bill Murray's 1979 look, Paul McCartney's Wings era, and Finnish race car driver Valtteri Bottas won't be permanent.
The music is the real draw. Local DJs spin most nights, and Burnham has built in bring-your-own-vinyl nights for record collectors who want to put their own selections on the turntable. Unlike the quieter hi-fi listening bars that inspired the concept, The Mullet is built to be loud. The room is bright and colorful rather than dim and moody, and dancing is the point, not an afterthought.
The Neighborhood's Other Constant
The Mullet is new. SB Funk Zone Live is not, and that's exactly why it matters. The series launched in March 2024 as a bimonthly evening event, modeled loosely on downtown's popular 1st Thursday format, where Funk Zone businesses stay open late and feature local art, music, and wine specials. This year's schedule includes a September 27 date, running 5 to 8 p.m., later this month.
The format has stayed consistent since it started: participating venues commit to featuring a local artist, band, or craftsperson for the evening, whether that's a gallery hosting a reception or a tasting room pouring alongside a live musician. It's free, open to all ages, and designed to get people walking block to block rather than parking once and staying put, which happens to be the easiest way to deal with the neighborhood's tightest resource.
The Pattern Worth Noticing
Put these two things side by side and a clearer picture of the Funk Zone emerges. This is a neighborhood that changes by filling in, not spreading out. A vinyl bar opens behind a taproom because a parking law freed up a lease, not because a new building went up. A recurring street event keeps drawing people back to businesses that have been there for years, because the format doesn't need new square footage to work. The Funk Zone's boundaries, roughly State Street to Garden Street and Montecito Street down to Cabrillo Boulevard, haven't moved. What's inside them keeps getting denser.
If you live nearby, that's worth knowing next time you notice a new sign on a building that hasn't changed shape in years. The story usually isn't expansion. It's someone finding room where you didn't think there was any.
Santa Barbara keeps handing out these small local puzzles, the kind you only notice if you're paying attention block by block. That's the same kind of attention the team at Crawford Speier brings to every neighborhood we cover, from the Funk Zone to Montecito to the Santa Ynez Valley. If you're curious what else is shifting in your part of town, or you're ready to talk about what your home is worth in today's market, reach out any time.
