Is Club Ripples going to have its last call?

Long Beach’s first and longest running gay dance bar, which opened in Belmont Shore in 1972, is for sale. Owners Larry Hebert and John Garcia, who have owned it since 1980, said it’s time to retire.

“We’re old,” Hebert said during a recent interview in their back office at the bar. “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 adds: “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,” he said.

$4.2 million asking price

The sale includes the 5,000-square-foot bar and 1,500-square-foot adjoining liquor store at Ocean Boulevard and Granada Avenue, the property and all permits and licenses. The price is $4.2 million.

Hebert and Garcia, who celebrated their 40th anniversary as a couple in 2014, would like to see another gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender couple make the purchase and continue the bar’s legacy, instead of someone who wants to demolish it and build apartments or condos or any other structure.

“I want to see the bar still going, but I don’t know if it will,” Hebert said.

Club history

The history of the bar dates to the 1950s when it was a gay bar called Oceania that closed in 1968, Garcia said.

Later, actor John Agar, who also was Shirley Temple’s first husband, bought the place and turned it into a heterosexual bar-restaurant called John Agar’s Celebrity House, which was sold to Mary Azar, who renamed it Mary’s Celebrity House.

The location went through several other owners before it was transformed into a gay bar named Ripples in early 1973. The bar was open seven days a week. Eventually the word “club” was added to the title.

Waiter, manager, owner

Garcia was a waiter during the days of Mary’s Celebrity House and worked his way up to becoming manager of Ripples.

Hebert was a mailman in his native San Pedro when he met Garcia in the early 1970s.

By 1980, the two bought out Ripples’ owners and took possession of the bar.

For more than two decades, the place was packed on most nights and had lines out the door and around the block.

But as competition increased with more gay bars opening in the city and the owners holding onto outdated policies (for example, no drinks on the dance floor), customers gave their gay dollars to other watering holes.

Tabatha stops by

By 2011, Club Ripples was in such dire financial straits that Tabatha Coffey of the Bravo TV reality show “Tabatha Takes Over” stopped by and gave the bar and Hebert and Garcia a make-over.

While Hebert and Garcia had tried to blame the competition and their staff for the club’s problems and financial woes, Coffey told them their problems were the result of Hebert’s crazy club rules and poor customer service and Garcia’s penny pinching.

At the time, Hebert and Garcia already were thinking about selling the bar, they said.

“Tabatha was very helpful to us,” Hebert said.

Last call

But it’s getting close to last call.

“We’ve had the ride of our life,” Hebert said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”