Knowing only that he was relatively new to town, appeared to have some money to play with, and decided to name a bar after himself, I made some initial assumptions about Arnie Sturham — namely, that he’d gotten rich in tech or finance and figured it might be fun to run his own joint, without much concern for the bottom line. (My apologies, as this happens here regularly.)
But after meeting the founder of Arnie’s Rooftop Bar and spending about three hours with him over multiple cocktails one recent evening on his perch above Carpinteria’s Linden Square, I can happily report that I was totally wrong.
Sturham, it turns out, is a hospitality veteran, having run a popular bar/restaurant/live music venue called the Treehouse Café on Washington’s Bainbridge Island for decades. He sold the business two years ago and moved to Santa Barbara, seeking a new start both personally and professionally, living not in a mansion but in a condo above the Public Market…