Community Corner

At The Little Club, Young Coronadans Find Old Friends

Once frequented by sailors, The Little Club also has young patrons who often run into old classmates.

This story was written and reported by Gloria Tierney.

Every city has a bar where it feels more like a friend's living room than some unloved watering hole. For many Coronadans under 40 that place is The Little Club.

To some, especially those who moved away, the former sailor’s bar is reunion central.

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 “You always know when you go there, you’re going to run into someone you know,” said Kristi Johnson, a costume supervisor with the San Francisco Opera who graduated from Coronado High School in 2000.

One of the first things she does when she comes back for a visit is stop by The Little Club.

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Mayor Casey Tanaka, another Coronado High alum, also drops by now and then to nurse a Malibu rum and coke and catch up with former classmates.

Johnson thinks the tradition started because the Little Club is the open until 2am. 

“There used to be Island Saloon,” she said. Once it’s closed The Little Club was the last bar standing.

It’s also a place you can hang with people your own age.

Many older customers drifted away in the 1990s “when indoor smoking was banned,” said Ernie Valdez, the bar’s manager.

Besides meeting old friends, young adults come to play a little pool, listen to music, and imbibe a reasonably priced drink. 

“A pitcher of Bud Light cost $9 here. Some place else it might cost you $16,” Valdez said.

Legend has it that the affordable drink tradition goes back to bars early years. The Little Club started out as a sailor’s bar. Prices were kept low so that a young man on shore leave or returning from months at sea could enjoy a brew on a seaman’s salary.

The bar opened in the 1950s and hasn’t changed much since.  

“It’s a bar from another era,” Tanaka said. “Its décor is dark, nautical and rustic with wood paneling everywhere.”

No meals are served, just chips, nuts and jerky. Nobody expects a foo-foo drink.

 “We sell Jim [Jameson] and Jack [Daniels], but no frozen margaritas,” Valdez said. “The blender broke years ago and I haven’t gotten around to replacing it.”

Flat-screen TVs and a karaoke night are among the few additions. The rest of the bar remains unchanged.

While it has all the trappings of a dive bar, it does have a sense of class and propriety.

The place is clean and in good condition. IDs are checked at the door and management keeps a close eye on the patrons in the bar.

They also monitor the patio with a security camera to spot trouble before it happens and make sure know one is bringing drinks outside bar boundaries or serving drinks to minors on the sly.

Despite its status as reunion central for Coronado High alumni, The Little Club still serves sailors. “It’s not like the old days, but we still get guys from the carriers and the Amphibious Base,” Valdez said.


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