Have $4.2 million? Long Beach’s Club Ripples is for sale

The owners of Club Ripples - Long Beach's first and longest running gay dance bar - are selling the iconic landmark for $4.2 million. Photo: Q Voice News.

The owners of Club Ripples – Long Beach’s first and longest running gay dance bar – are selling the iconic landmark for $4.2 million. Photo: Q Voice News.

LONG BEACH – The owners of Club Ripples – Long Beach’s first and longest running gay dance bar – are selling the iconic landmark for $4.2 million.

The sale will include the 5,000 square-foot bar, which opened in 1973 in the Belmont shore neighborhood, and 1,500 square-foot adjoining liquor store at the corner of Ocean Boulevard and Granada Avenue, the property and all permits and license.

Larry Herbert and John Garcia, who have been the proprietors since 1980 and are celebrating their 42th anniversary as a couple, said it’s time for last call because they want to retire.

“We’re old,” Hebert said earlier this year. “I’m 63, and John is 70. I don’t want to be as old as Methuselah. It’s time to pack it in.”
 
Garcia added: “We don’t want to die here.”
 
Hebert said it wasn’t a difficult decision. “We’re too old to deal with baby sitting these kids.”

 

About the author

Phillip Zonkel

Award-winning journalist Phillip Zonkel spent 17 years at Long Beach's Press-Telegram, where he was the first reporter in the paper's history to have a beat covering the city's vibrant LGBTQ. He also created and ran the popular and innovative LGBTQ news blog, Out in the 562.

He won two awards and received a nomination for his reporting on the local LGBTQ community, including a two-part investigation that exposed anti-gay bullying of local high school students and the school districts' failure to implement state mandated protections for LGBTQ students.

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