Movies put on hold as westside pub beckons. (Weekly Briefing).

JIM Conners named his bar, Sonny McLean's Irish Pub and Restaurant, after his grandfather, the first family member born in the US. after the family fled the Irish Potato Famine in the 19th century. Conners and his wife Francine bought the Santa Monica bar in 1999, and they have made some changes -- including karaoke Wednesdays. But they still have staples like a St. Patrick's Day shindig, with stepdancing and an Irish folk band playing live music.

"It was originally called McGinty's Irish Pub. Then it was The Red Setter. I had never even heard of the place before I started looking into buying it. I have a management team now, but when we first opened, I had an Irish cook, I bartended and my wife was the waitress. Now I have 12 employees.

"I came out here from Boston in 1996. At the time I had no ideal would be running a pub. I came out here to work in the movie industry. I had an editing job lined up, but it fell through so I got a job at the Boathouse on the Santa Monica Pier. Then one day, a friend told me The Red Setter was for sale. So I called the owner, but he had just sold the place to a group who wanted to gut it and turn it into an Indian restaurant. The sale fell through at the last minute. I went down and introduced myself. He was from Boston too. We really hit it off.

"The year before my wife and I took it over, I think the previous owner grossed around $320,000. For 2000 it was about $580,000. In 2001 we grossed around $540,000. Sept. 11 didn't really hurt us, to be honest.

"When we started out, we went through between 12 and 16 kegs a week of the combined beers. Now it's between 35 and 40 kegs. And our food went from about $300 a night to around $1,000, and $1,200 on Saturdays. Since we started having pub trivia matches, Tuesday nights are as busy as Saturdays.

"We grew by being there and spending a lot of time with the people -- we kept all the regulars from the previous pub -- and by changing the food. I started serving the East Coast things that you can't reeally get out here, like fresh clams and Guinness beef pie and lobster rolls, and people love them. Our best selling food item is fish and chips."