It’s a Pier Pleasure: Sun, Sights, Fun

It was 5 a.m. on Saturday and most of Los Angeles still slumbered, but the invasion of the Pier People was already under way. On freeways and highways from El Monte to Woodland Hills, battered Fords and sleek Jags streamed toward Santa Monica Bay’s pleasure piers.

Steve Garcia from Glendale, a fisherman and a regular at the Manhattan Beach Pier, was just arriving with his wife and two children.

“Early in the morning, before the sun comes up, that’s when the fish bite,” he said, lugging fishing rods, a tackle box, folding chairs and an ice chest out to the far end. The kids followed, hugging their jackets against the cool morning breeze.

Garcia, in a frayed blue sweat shirt and Dodger cap, was among the first to arrive and stake out his favorite spot at the railing with a view of the Pacific.

He wasn’t admiring the big picture, however, at least not yet. There would be plenty of time for contemplation later, when noon rolled around and people began to think of lunch, a cold beer and a snooze in the sun.

Now he peered down where cold, green water swelled and lapped around the blue-black mussels clustered on the pilings.

“I think we’re going to get some big ones, halibut and bonito maybe,” he mused. “It’s going to be a good day.”

Love to Walk the Planks

For Pier People, an eclectic assortment of residents from all over Los Angeles, a day spent at one of the fishing and pleasure piers on Santa Monica Bay is a good day.

In fact, each year the five piers--at Malibu, Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach--attract about 10 million visitors for whom happiness is the chance to walk the planks.

Even a slew of recent bad news about wind and wave damage caused by winter storms and the May 27 fire on the Redondo Beach Pier hasn’t staunched the flow.

Don Souther at the Hermosa Beach Pier, a Los Angeles County lifeguard for 22 years, knows the attraction well.

“The piers are like a magnet,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what it is--maybe walking out over the water or watching the waves roll under the pilings--but we see people out on this pier every day of the year.”

By midday, the sun was high and hot, cars were swarming into beach parking lots and the invasion’s second wave was in full force.

The scene was a sociologist’s dream: more fisherman, teen-agers on roller skates, kids riding skateboards, couples hand in hand, bicyclists taking a rest, strolling seniors and parents pushing strollers.

On the Santa Monica Pier, Arizonans Elsa and Henry Zettelman were getting set to whirl away a few minutes on the historic carrousel.

“I don’t think I’ve been on one of these since I was 10,” Elsa said, settling into a painted sleigh while Henry climbed onto a white horse and clutched the brass pole.

On the wood planks of the 720-foot Malibu Pier, couples in summer white topped off brunch at Alice’s Restaurant with a stroll out over the water.

On the end of the cement-decked, 1,294-foot-long Hermosa Beach Pier, Clyde and Karen Menin of Woodland Hills had set out their buckets and chairs and rigged four rods to the railing.

Good Place to Watch

Clyde, keeping a sharp eye on his line while he read the Sunday newspaper, paused to explain that he has fished off the Hermosa Pier for 42 years.

“Right here is a good spot to sit and watch the waves, watch the airplanes take off and watch the people,” he said.

A few steps away, Troy Horne, 20, was trying out a new rod and reel while Tracey Holmes, his girlfriend, stood beside his wheelchair kibitzing. Horne, paralyzed in a dirt-bike accident on the Mojave Desert last February, was on a day outing from Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in Downey.

“This is the first pier I’ve been to,” he said with a big grin. “The fishing is great, although I would rather have been surfing.”

Ramp a Bit Steep

How’s the pier for wheelchairs?

“The ramp is just a little too steep,” he said, “and there are some cobblestones, so Tracey had to help push. But we’re having a great time.”

There used to be many recreational piers along Santa Monica Bay, but over the decades they’ve gone the way of all wave-buffeted structures: knocked down in storms or pulled down by their owners.

The Venice Pier, once one of the most popular in Southern California, still juts into the sea, but its vigil is now lonely. In 1983, monster waves buckled its approach ramp and cracked the cement, and the pier was officially closed in November, 1986.

Group Presses for Reopening

One of the area’s newer piers, built in 1965 and owned by the city of Los Angeles, the Venice Pier remains closed for lack of agreement on a renovation plan. But its defenders have formed a support group called Pier Pressure, whose goal is to repair and reopen it.

The same 1983 storm also shivered the Santa Monica Pier’s timbers. The north section, known as the Municipal Pier, lost 420 feet off the end and Looff’s Pleasure Pier (the south part of which supports the carrousel building, businesses and the parking lot) also was damaged. The city of Santa Monica is rebuilding both.

The Redondo Pier--actually three piers, the Monstad Pier (1928), Horseshoe Pier (1930s) and Fishing Promenade (1983)--is the most commercial. Ironically, it has been damaged the most.

Winter storms this year on Jan. 17-18 pulled out pilings under the Horseshoe Pier, and on April 30, wind-swept waves destroyed the Fishing Promenade. A month later, a fire caused an estimated $6.8 million in damage to the Horseshoe Pier.

Benefits and Dangers

Meanwhile, the same storms battered the other piers, though the damage wasn’t severe enough to close them.

“The piers are wonderful, and there are offsetting recreational benefits,” said Larry Charness, chief of the planning division of Los Angeles County Beaches and Harbors and a man familiar with pier problems. “But you have to find someone who’s willing to accept the liability and the expense.

“When you stick a finger of concrete or wood out into the ocean, the ocean gets angry. Severe coastal storms attack the first thing they come to--the pilings.”

At first glance, the piers look the same: wood and cement decks, bait shops, sportfishing facilities and greasy-spoon snack bars. But there are differences.

Recreation Centers

The Santa Monica and Redondo Beach piers are recreation and entertainment centers large enough to support a variety of shops, restaurants and rides. In contrast, the piers at Malibu, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach are primarily for fishing and strolling.

The Santa Monica Pier’s highlight is its restored carrousel. The building housing it was dedicated as a National Historic Landmark on June 10, 1988. Thrill rides, including a Ferris wheel, miniature train and kiddie cars, are set up behind it.

“When renovation is complete,” said Judith Meister, the pier manager, “there will be shops and restaurants with 134,000 square feet of commercial use.”

Teens carry boom boxes and friends shout greetings. Clowns peddle balloons and photographers zoom in on kids eating ice cream. People-watchers can stare as much as they want at the parade of humanity and know that for once, they’re in good company.

Soul of the City

The city-owned Redondo Pier is the soul of Redondo Beach and “the core of the community,” said Jim Graham, a pier spokesman. The nerve center for a modern ocean-side recreation area with a public parking garage, the brick-and-cement decks sport gourmet restaurants like Tony’s (a pier dining institution since 1952), fast-food outlets and stores selling sports clothes, gifts and novelties.

Businesses on the undamaged part of the pier are still open, and the rest plan to return.

“The city is dedicated to completely rebuilding,” Graham said.

The three fishing piers belong in a different, more reflective world.

Hermosa’s Features

The Hermosa Beach Pier, a city pier built in 1965, has a snack bar at the end dispensing fast food to strollers and fishermen. For a complete meal, however, several good restaurants are along the boardwalk and on Pier Avenue.

The water south of the pier is for surfing only, and from the pier, shutterbugs get a great gull’s-eye view of the action. Volleyball nets are set up on the sand on both sides.

Malibu Pier, built around 1920 and now a part of Malibu Lagoon State Park on Pacific Coast Highway, is picture-post-card pretty with its wood deck and freshly painted white railings and buildings. It’s open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., the only pier to close at night.

The clear air, curving beach and mountain-rimmed bay is a mail-to-your-friends-back-East photo opportunity. Joel Ladin, the pier’s new master concessionaire, plans to add four restaurants at both ends, while the two towers framing the entrance gate will house gift shops.

Marine Museum on Pier

The Manhattan Beach Pier, also owned by the state, was built between 1917 and 1920 but has been repaired many times since. The Roundhouse at the pier’s end began life as a restaurant but now contains a marine studies museum and laboratory for schoolchildren that’s also open to the public.

Steve Garcia was still fishing in front of the museum’s door about 4 p.m. when his two boys came up from the beach, tan and sandy and complaining that they were tired and wanted to go home.

While Garcia packed up his gear, the kids walked through the marine museum, staring at the sharks and crabs in the big aquariums and gently poking the red starfish in the tidal-basin tank. Then, with everybody carrying something and Garcia toting his bucket of freshly caught fish, they headed for home.

Yep, it had been a good day on the pier.