Beloved Marina del Rey Pub Closes After Five Decades, Turtle Races End

Brennan’s Pub held its last turtle races and shuttered on December 27, ending a run that began in the early 1970s and became woven into Marina del Rey nightlife. The bar was best known for casual beer and pub fare, and for a quirky Thursday night tradition that started in 1975 and drew regulars who came for the races and stayed for the conversation.

The final weekend was an emotional one for patrons and staff. The message was simple, "Brennan’s Pub will be closing the doors after this Saturday night." That line reflected a decision that rippled through the neighborhood and the small but active craft beer community that used Brennan’s as a gathering point.

Ownership ties help explain the timing. Brennan’s was operated by the Artisanal Brewers Collective, which also closed two other Los Angeles area businesses the same weekend. Those simultaneous closures removed multiple local venues at once, shrinking the network of hotel bars, neighborhood pubs and tasting rooms that support tap rotations, small batch pours, and events where brewers, homebrewers and beer lovers connect.

Brennan’s was not a production brewery, but it mattered to beer culture. Neighborhood pubs like Brennan’s provide community infrastructure. They give fledgling breweries draft placements, host meetups and fundraisers, and offer affordable, low pressure space for people to discover new beers. Losing a site that has run weekly programming for half a century changes routine social calendars and the informal distribution channels smaller breweries rely on.

For those who counted on Brennan’s for Thursday night gatherings, trivia, or the turtle races, the immediate practical steps are simple. Reach out to regulars by social channels or message boards to relocate weekly nights. Check with nearby bars about draft lists and event calendars to find new hosts for tap takeovers and meetups. Brewers looking for draft accounts should contact other neighborhood pubs and community venues now to fill gaps left by Brennan’s and the other closures.

The end of Brennan’s closes a chapter for Marina del Rey, and highlights how fragile the local ecosystem that supports craft beer can be. As the community reorganizes, the personal traditions and small rituals that characterized Brennan’s will influence where people gather next and how local beer culture adapts in the months ahead.