But I took it because I knew in the long run, it was going to be worth my while.”īut through it all, Ripples has remained a Long Beach institution.Īnd Hebert and Garcia are proud of what they’ve done– not only operating the longest-running gay bar in Long Beach, but also being activists in the community.
“She’s a lovely person she’s real and she works very hard. “She was tough, but we ended up friends,” he added. I did what I had to do to fix my bar because things were slow. “I’ve watched that show before she even contacted us. Tabatha Coffey, from the reality TV show “Tabatha Takes Over,” entered the picture. But still, we used to go to funerals more than once a week.”Įight years ago, Ripples went through a financial downturn. We even switched to using plastic glasses for drinks. “This bar was spotless during the AIDS crisis and people knew it and would come to the bar,” Hebert said. The men lost hundreds of employees, friends and customers to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, for example. “We took over the liquor store (also on the property) in 1994.”Īnd the two have kept Club Ripples going ever since.
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“Little by little, one by one, we bought them out and in 1980 we owned all 12 shares plus the property,” Hebert said. So Garcia and Hebert started taking control. The dozen owners, he said, could not understand why they had to keep putting money into the club while people lined up to get in. Garcia, who had been a business major at Cal State Long Beach, helped the owners reconstruct the books after a firebombing there - and noticed massive financial mismanagement. “There were lines out the door seven nights a week.” Garcia even helped Hebert get a job at Ripples. Later that night, however, Hebert went to Victor Hugo’s (now Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles) - and Garcia was there too. After a stop at the Diamond Horseshoe, in Wilmington, he stepped inside Ripples. It was Hebert’s first time going to gay bars. Then, on a hot August night in 1974, he met Hebert. Garcia stayed employed there through it all.
#GAY BARS ORANGE COUNTY SERIES#
Then Azar sold it to a group of 12 Orange County business people, who changed the name to Great Expectations.Īfter a series of renovations, they re-opened and changed the name again, this time to Ripples. Garcia worked for her as a waiter from 1968 to 1969. “It was a restaurant and an iconic gay place,” Garcia said, “and it never went straight and he sold it to Mary Azar.”Īzar turned it into Mary’s Celebrity House.