Learn to Chill: The Emergence of Vinyl Bars

Walking through downtown San Luis Obispo, a lot of storefronts are starting to blend sonically, as they play through the most trending songs you’ve probably already heard on TikTok or curated by AI on popular streaming apps. Now, there’s a quieter shift starting to take shape.

 What we are witnessing is an emergence of a throwback of vinyl lounges that have music with intention behind it, pulling from an array of genres and eras instead of just what’s trending. Although small, these spaces create a big atmosphere that feels personal. When stepping into Jan’s Place or Lo-Fi Lounge, both venues encapsulate such energy.

Living overseas for 20 years in areas such as Japan and Australia, Jan's place owner Jeff Root and his wife Lisa Salmon have had quite the vinyl experience and felt inspired to bring the same ideas to SLO. 

“We've been thinking about a place like this for a long time, but we’ve never been in one place long enough to actually do it,” Root says. 

Deciding to live in San Luis Obispo, Root took over the establishment on Osos Street called Jan’s place. Part hair salon, part wine bar, Jan’s (pronounced like “yawns”) Place turned into Root and his wife's project. The project being a lounge area with a capacity of around 30 people, and a turntable with a refined sound system that plays just loud enough so people can simultaneously acknowledge the music while talking to one another.

“Our tagline is ‘music at a polite volume’,” Root says. 

With 14 resident DJs accompanied by around a hundred wines and a menu consisting of tinned fish and stuffed grape leaves, visitors are encapsulated in an almost European atmosphere. “We're doing this thing that we’ve seen in many other places, we’re just doing our own version of it,” as Root put it. “We got the space, got going, and we let the space evolve. If you come here every 2 months, it’ll be different every time you come.”

Root’s experience with Kissaten, which are traditional Japanese cafes fashioned with dimly lit interiors and music that offers a retro escape, is ingrained into his bar. However, he makes it clear that there’s no set in stone label to his designs, nor are they ever complete. 

Jan’s Place is equipped with custom-built speakers that make a nice separation of lows, mids, and highs while not being too loud. The attention to sound for any knowledgeable Dj or simply a visitor that wants to hear their records with a rad sound system is a step Jan’s Place takes to share the passion with the community. In an age where streaming seems to be the main form of music consumption, I wondered if Jan’s Place’s goal is to combat this issue. 

“We don’t think about it too much to be honest. I knew what I wanted to do and the vibe I wanted to create and that’s what we’re doing. We’re not trying to combat anything, we’re just trying to make a nice space where the music’s really good, then the service level is really high and the feeling in here is really good,” Root said.  

Although it may challenge one’s norms of your typical college bar, Jan’s Place offers a humble and intimate space you can enjoy solo or with friends.

Less than a ten-minute drive away is downtown, where bars such as The Mark, The Carissa and Frog & Peach Pub—just to name a few—are filled with college students, visitors and locals alike. Right next to The Mark, you can find Kreuzberg California where one side is a favorite of students and locals for enjoying a good cup of coffee while studying. On the other side, whether you enter through the long draped curtain or a door you have to duck under, you enter Lo-Fi Lounge, “intended to be sort of an intimate alternative to college bars downtown,” Robbie Bruzus, programming director/curator of Lo-Fi Lounge shared. 

During the interview, Bruzus emphasized the importance of creating an experience that is unlike what you usually see downtown, “a sensation of different” as he put it. He explained how welcoming that difference, and entering this almost psychedelic experience through the array of music genres and the unique interior design produces expansive thinking.

“That’s the recipe of the soup: trying to curate a space and an experience that is a psychedelic experience. The experience being the thing that you are just not familiar with,” Bruzus said. 

As you enter the lounge, it immediately feels like you are in a movie scene where two people are destined to meet. With the dark shades of red, black, and brown, a balcony with a birds-eye view of the room, and dim lights, the only way to describe the atmosphere is sexy.

“There’s this principle in Japanese architecture where you take a visual breath when you enter the room. A lot of Japanese doorways are quite low and it forces you to dip your head and when you enter the space, you take a visual breath,” Bruzus said, “A lot of people have been in this room before and they’ve always walked through the curtains. But when you come through this little entry, they’re like ‘Oh my gosh, that mural is amazing! When did that get there?’ It’s been there for 15 years. The touches that we put in for Lo-Fi lounge are mid-century modern, and we’re continuously building and trying to amplify the vibe.”  

The genres spun at Lo-Fi lounge range from soul, rock and roll, garage, house, and everything in between.

“My whole point is that even though it might not be your type of music, suspend your preferences and just let yourself go…The vinyl aspect of the bar I don’t think is a unique value proposition but, I don’t want to characterize this experience as a vinyl record experience, I want to characterize it as a sexy lounge experience,” Bruzus said.

Places like the Lo-Fi Lounge encourage people to get up, get on the floor, and start grooving with no worries about others' perception. It’s that kind of easy going environment that makes the culture here feel so easygoing. San Luis Obispo ranked fifth out of 10 counties, earning recognition as the happiest county in California.

How does San Luis Obispo allow this environment to dance without a care to bleed into their establishments downtown, where locals and tourists and everything in between stroll through? 

“I think our culture globally right now, well, definitely in the U.S. is in the midst, and has been for 15 or 20 years of monoculture. Just everyone’s doing the same thing and it all kinda feels the same and feels a little boring to me. I think that the size of SLO allows for more experimentation. There’s a very awesome mix of eclectic people here that bring a lot of different flavors,” Bruzus said. 

In a downtown scene often defined by repetition, Jan’s place and Lo-Fi lounge offer something quieter, but more intentional. Not just in the music they play, but in how they invite people to engage with it. The experience doesn’t stop at listening. Guests are encouraged to step behind the booths themselves. 

At Jan’s Place, open deck nights allow anyone from beginners to experienced selectors to sign up for a 30-minute slot, sometimes even learning the equipment on the spot. Just a few minutes away, Lo-Fi lounge offers a similar invitation, where Wax-On Wednesday’s are open to those willing to share their own records of a rotating mix of genres.

In a time where music is often consumed through algorithms, spaces such as these return a sense of agency back to the listener where the music isn’t just background noise, but something you can contribute to. And in a town like San Luis Obispo, where experimentation seeps through the streets of downtown, vinyl lounges are not just a trend here, but a reminder of meaningful experiences meant to be had solely from the dropping of a needle. 

Jan’s Place is open Tuesday through Thursday from 4 to 9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. Lo-Fi Lounge is open Wednesdays from 6 to 10 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 7 p.m. to midnight. Drink some nice drinks and be encouraged to talk to some new people while the DJs are hard at work spinning some vinyls. 

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Sofia Alvarez is a writer on our Editorial Team. She conducted the interviews, wrote the article, and made the graphic. Mckenna Zolty is a member of our Photo Team. She took the photos.