Circle Bar Preserves Old Corner of Santa Monica

It was only a few years ago that Santa Monica’s Main Street was an authentic neighborhood, full of corner grocery stores, laundries, thrift shops and bars. But the early 1980s brought gentrification, and what stands there now--tony boutiques, galleries and expensive restaurants--has turned the formerly quiet area into a miniature Westwood.

Where the seminal punk rock club Blackies’ once stood is now Wolfgang Puck’s celebrity-studded restaurant, Chinois on Main. The old Pink Elephant, a dance bar with a mixed gay and straight clientele, shut down a few years ago and recently reopened as a private club called The Pink.

Only one nightspot stands in its original condition at the south end of Main Street: the Circle. It’s the last bar of its kind on the trendy avenue, where Hank Williams and Patsy Cline are king and queen of the jukebox and the bar serves pickled eggs and Slim Jims instead of dim sum and tapas.

“It’s simple here,” explained longtime bartender Jackie Ericsson, who knows many of her customers by their first names. “It’s just a place for people who want to take a minute to stop and breathe.”

The bar itself is an elongated oval, providing patrons the chance for some good people-watching. In the back, some excellent amateur players keep the pool table busy. The walls display a black velvet painting of the Golden Gate Bridge and are covered with worn prints of things such as a monkey on a toilet and dogs playing poker.

In front of one stool sits a small sign that reads Office. It’s the headquarters of the Circle’s owner, Jack Garner, who keeps tabs on his customers and his help seven nights a week from the same seat.

“We serve drinks at an average price here,” he said. “Quantity at a reasonable price. We’re just a plain, old, solid bar. I used to have a sign on the wall that said, ‘Like an old shoe, it’s comfortable.’ ”

The Circle is more than half a century old. It was originally in Venice, at the site of the now-demolished Pacific Ocean Pier, and moved to Main Street in the early 1960s. Garner, a longtime Los Angeles bar owner, bought the Circle 12 years ago. Since then the businesses around him have slowly closed down, replaced by upscale establishments. But Garner hasn’t made any changes in the Circle. Nor does he intend to.

“It’s great,” he said with a shrug when asked about the changes on Main Street. “Ain’t nothing else you can think about it. Kind of unfortunate that there’s nothing left over the last 12 years.”

Garner has seen his clientele change. What used to be “mostly old-age pensioners and a few rowdies” is now a mixed bag of young and old people of all income levels and life styles, all taking very little notice of one another.

Sitting at the bar for a few hours can be like seeing modern Los Angeles in microcosm. A cluster of casually dressed young people play a video trivia game at one corner of the bar, near a deaf Latino man selling plastic light-up jewelry. Men wearing baseball caps and work shirts concentrate on watching a pool match, seemingly unaware of another man clad in leather, a spangled Mardi Gras mask and two rhinestone earrings, who is drinking quietly with his girlfriend two stools away.

Patrons continually cite the eclectic collection of people at the Circle as their favorite aspect of the bar.

“It’s a great place. You see some of the nicest people and some of the strangest people too,” said Dan (Buck) Buckingham, a Santa Monica artist whose studio is within walking distance of the bar. Buckingham said a young movie star came in recently “and got plastered,” unnoticed by the regulars.

Cyndi Coyne, a writer, finds inspiration for new characters at the Circle. “I like the way the Gypsy can throw people out if they’re drunk, screaming and yelling, and then turn around and laugh and say, ‘Hiya baby, what do want to drink?’ ” Gypsy, one of the night bartenders, has been pouring at the Circle for more than a decade and is now on leave, Garner said.

All the bartenders at the Circle are women, ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s. “Women do a better job,” Garner said. “They don’t get in fights if someone gets drunk or mad and calls them a name.”

Construction continues on Main Street. Old buildings nearby are being razed. But Garner isn’t planning to make any changes in his bar. Nor, he says, is the Circle going to disappear to be replaced by a clothing store or a frozen-yogurt shop.

“People ask me when I’m going to retire, and I say ‘Shoot, you got to feel good to retire. I don’t feel good enough!’ ” he said. “When I retire I want to go see the Pope or go to Seoul and see the Olympics.

He looked around at the crowd. “This is a nice place to be, in a way. It’s my nature, in a way. I’ve done it all my life.”

The Circle, 2926 Main St., Santa Monica. Open Mondays through Wednesdays 2:30 p.m. to 2 a.m.; Thursdays 12:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. and Fridays through Sundays 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.