Bobby Green really wanted to go to design school, but he also really wanted to start a business. Eventually, he found a way to combine his two passions.

The result of this art-commerce combination is 1933 Group LLC. The company now owns four bars in its L.A. base, and one in San Francisco. Each has a distinct themed d & #233;cor, and Green serves as the creative director.

The company’s first bar, Bigfoot Lodge in Atwater Village, opened 10 years ago, with a hunting and campfire theme, complete with stuffed animal heads and a “Sasquatch National Forest” sign. A sister Bigfoot opened in San Francisco soon after. The group followed up with West L.A.’s Saints & Sinners, which has a heaven-and-hell d & #233;cor, and Little Cave in Highland Park, which has a bat cave theme.

The newest bar, Stinkers Truck Stop, opened in November in Silver Lake and is a campy version of a Midwestern truck stop. There are life-size pictures of Burt Reynolds and Daisy Duke on the respective restroom doors, and toy skunks spew “stink” or fog when bartenders pull a chain to blow a truck horn.

Green chose his themes based on instincts.

“I wanted to create a nostalgic feel for people in my age group,” said Green, 38. “And I’m a big connoisseur of cheesy American culture that a lot of people try to sweep under the rug, but I try to celebrate that.”

Case in point: The walls at Stinkers are lined with 5,000 cans of cheap beer, and the bar patrons tend to drink similar brews, including Colt 45 and Pabst Blue Ribbon from the can.

Green handles the day-to-day operations of all the company’s bars. His two partners, Dimitri Komarov, 36, and Dmitry Liberman, 38, run the financial side. The group, named after the year prohibition was repealed, has another bar in the works. The trio plans to open another Bigfoot-themed bar in West Los Angeles this summer, near Culver City. It will be their third Bigfoot bar.

“It’s really good for a business to have an identity,” said Elizabeth Peterson, a hospitality business consultant who owns Elizabeth Peterson Group in downtown Los Angeles. She’s familiar with 1933 Group, but has never worked with the group. “They’re the most successful ones. Restaurants, bars and nightclubs have more than a 90 percent failure rate in their first year. If there’s any confusion about who you are, especially in L.A. or New York, you will not make it.”

Neighborhood bars

The company’s bars cater to suits as well as hipsters. The goal is to become a neighborhood watering hole rather than the latest hot nightspot. Some, including Stinkers, aren’t clearly identified: You have to know it by the picture of the skunk.

“We want to maintain an underground cool factor,” Green said. “We didn’t have a sign on Bigfoot for years because we wanted it to be a word-of-mouth kind of thing. We don’t want to feel corporate.”

The regulars are testament to the success of the company’s strategy.

“The first night I came here, the bartender made me feel at home,” said Disko Blaze, a 30-year-old Toluca Lake resident who frequents Bigfoot at least once a week. “It’s like Cheers, where everyone knows your name.”

Green started out in the hospitality business when he opted to open Cacao Coffee House in West Los Angeles in 1993 instead of going to design school. He enjoyed the social aspect of the business, but it wasn’t making much money.

“So I decided to open a bar, which has a similar social scene, but with booze,” Green said.

He starting pitching his idea for a silly hunting lodge-themed bar to potential investors. Through word of mouth, he found Komarov and Liberman. The two had grown up in Santa Monica together and had already started a clothing business, Komarov Inc., with Komarov’s mother, a costume designer. Liberman said they were thinking about starting their own bar. When they met Green, they decided to form a partnership.

Liberman used savings he was going to use to buy a house, and Komarov took out a second mortgage on his condominium to come up with the $500,000 that got the bar going. Komarov said the company is worth about $5 million now, and is profitable.

Bigfoot Lodge opened in 1999, and Green shuttered Cacao. The second Bigfoot location opened in San Francisco in 2001. Little Cave followed. They opened Lucky Tiki in Mission Hills, which the partners sold to a developer after about a year. The company then opened Saints & Sinners in 2006 and Stinkers in 2008.

Staying power?

“When we started Bigfoot, we were told the longevity of a bar was five years before you have to reconceptualize it,” Komarov said. “But ours have been more successful after five years, without much change.” The company spends between 10 percent and 15 percent of gross sales in upgrades and maintenance each year.

The new Westside location of Bigfoot is scheduled to open in June. This one will be made from recycled wood and naturally fallen trees, and part of it will be built from a movie backdrop: The Jim Carrey movie “Yes Man” featured a replica of the Atwater Village bar, and 1933 Group bought the set for its new bar.

Despite moving forward with another opening this year, 1933 Group’s business hasn’t been immune to the effects of the recession. The partners said they’ve seen a 20 percent decrease in business on weekdays, and patrons are choosing less-expensive drinks and tipping less. So the bars offer more drink specials during the week, such as $2 beers. Regular beer prices top out at $4.50, and well drinks are $6.

Though customers may be spending less and staying in on weekdays, the company has noticed more people coming in on the weekends. The neighborhood bar could be a good place to vent about troubles, Peterson said.

“It’s not about the drinking,” she said. “They want to talk about their problems.”

Peterson echoed 1933 Group’s observations of customers cutting back they’re buying less, skipping the valet, using credit cards instead of cash.

“People may not buy a new car this year, but they’ll go out for an evening of entertainment,” she said. “Historically, in tough times the bar industry fares pretty well. If you know what you’re doing and have a strong concept, it’s one of the few businesses I would recommend right now.”

1933 Group LLC

HEADQUARTERS: Los Angeles

FOUNDED: 1999

CORE BUSINESS: Bars

EMPLOYEES: 50

GOALS: To have at least 10 bars, up from the five they have now, and expand into other areas, such as a hotel; licensing the d & #233;cor concepts to other bar owners

DRIVING FORCE: People who enjoy the comfort of a neighborhood watering hole