The Circle Bar on Main Street is a proper dive — small, loud, dark, inexpensive — that has maintained its character through multiple rounds of development in the neighbourhood. The bar fills up late on weekends and attracts the kind of crowd that has been going out in Santa Monica for years rather than visiting.
It is not trying to be anything in particular. The drinks are cheap, the jukebox is genuine, and the bathroom is what dive bar bathrooms are. If you want the tourist-free end of Santa Monica nightlife, this is one of the few places left that delivers it.