A ‘Dive’ With a Difference : Circle Bar’s Regulars Skip More Chichi Watering Holes for a Warm, Seedy Place of Their Own

There’s a word for places like the Circle bar. The word is dive . The Circle is an oasis of seediness in a gentrified desert known as Main Street in Santa Monica. It is a survivor from the days when its Ocean Park neighborhood was a place for missions, thrift shops and flophouses rather than boutiques, art galleries and chichi restaurants.

“It’s a glorious dive,” co-manager T. J. Ozorio says. “It has the warmth of an English pub.”

It has some other things too. The brown Formica bar is a huge rectangle, filling the front of the room. Patrons sit along the outside, and the staff works on the inside, making the place much better for people-watching than a conventional straight-line bar.

Facing each other on opposite walls are posters of two topless, Rubenesque women. A Hula-Hoop hangs from the ceiling over the bar. Another prominent poster shows a chimpanzee sitting on a toilet, his shorts over his knees, a half-peeled banana in one hand and the overhead chain in the other. We’re talking real class here.

But it’s a dive with a difference. It’s lively and popular, for one thing--the crowd can be two and three deep at the bar some evenings. And the clientele is more eclectic than at your average low-life joint. There are neighborhood residents young and old, city officials, an occasional biker or two, yuppies who have soured on the pickup scene at other Main Street establishments--all of whom combine to keep the conversation moving and the people-watching interesting.

Longtime regulars say little has changed in the nearly 30 years the bar has occupied its location on the west side of Main between Kinney and Pier avenues.

“It was called Charlott’s Bar back then,” recalled Jesse Whittaker, 59, who has been a regular since the ‘60s. “Back then the bar only served beer and wine and the music was served up by a four-piece country and Western band.”

As Whittaker tells it, the band eventually gave way to a jukebox when Jack Garner, a longtime Los Angeles bar owner, acquired the place in the late ‘70s and renamed it the Circle. By then, the invasion of trendy stores and eating and drinking establishments was under way, but Garner refused to jump on the gentrification bandwagon.

“He had his way of running that bar and nobody could tell him otherwise,” said bartender Juanita Spheeris, an employee of more than 15 years known to one and all by her nickname, Gypsy. “He knew people real well.”

Garner, who died earlier this year, kept a watchful eye on his patrons and workers from a stool at the far end of the bar every day.

“The Circle wasn’t a part of his life, it was his life,” said his daughter, Patti Hayes. Hayes, who left a banking career to help run the Circle, now keeps tabs on things from the same perch her father occupied. She is co-manager along with Ozorio and shares ownership of the Circle with her sister, Jacqueline Ericsson, and brother, Jim Garner.

Like her father, Hayes is adamant about preserving the Circle’s authenticity.

“I like to see the upscale movement,” she said. “It’s good for business. But I would never change anything. If things are OK, why fix it?”

Actually, Hayes and her siblings have made one significant change since they took over: The Circle now boasts a $6,000 sound system and a compact disc jukebox with 3,000 selections.

Patrons like the Circle for reasons as varied as the posters, paintings and collectibles that shape the character of the place.

Whittaker, a retired aerospace worker, likes it because he “can let loose a little and sing along with the jukebox.”

Jane Benefield, a Santa Monica city planner, said she enjoys the varied and interesting crowd.

“Everyone is a character here,” Benefield said. “The pool sharks, the little old ladies, and the crossword geniuses.”

Chris Keshena, 37, an eight-year Circle regular, also likes the clientele.

“They don’t have a phony facade,” he said.

One thing people don’t go to the Circle for is the food. For crab cakes or endive-and-radicchio salad, you’ll have to look elsewhere on Main Street. Potato chips, Slim Jims and pickled eggs is the extent of the menu here.

A big drawing card, however, is the staff. The bartenders are all women, most of them real characters.

Ellen Henderson has been working at the bar for eight years. One of highlights, she said, was the time she landed a bit part in the Whoopi Goldberg movie, “Ghost,” a scene of which was filmed at the Circle.

“I made $500 for blowing my nose,” Henderson boasted.

Then there is Gypsy Spheeris, known among Circle regulars as a true comedienne.

“I have more fun than you can shake a stick at,” said Spheeris, who said she has performed at the Improv comedy club in Santa Monica.

“The Circle keeps me young. When people ask me if (the Circle) is a gay bar, I tell them it’s a happy bar.”