Pier Review : It’s Rock, Roll and Reel During 24-Hour Vigil at Hermosa Beach Hangout

An elderly couple relaxed on a bench at the Hermosa Beach Pier, reading the morning paper.

In front of them, skateboarders whirled about. A surfer stood nearby, peeling his wet suit to the waist while talking to a friend. A few long-haired teen-agers bicycled up and joined the conversation before racing down the pier.

Across the way, a young man and woman relaxed on another bench, taking in all the sights--the volleyball players, the sunbathers, the swimmers, the surfers, the strollers, the joggers, the roller-skaters.

“If anything’s going to happen in Hermosa, it’s going to happen here,” said one young man, who looked to be about 20.

Indeed, the Hermosa Beach Pier is a gathering place for all kinds of people--from skateboarders to fishermen, senior citizens to heavy-metal rockers, families to runaways, preachers to drug dealers.

See Them All

And in a 24-hour period, one is likely see them all.

One Saturday afternoon not long ago, 19-year-old Alex Bacon and his friends were among the many young men practicing skateboard tricks on the pier’s benches, walls and steps.

Bacon made it clear that he did not enjoy some of the crowd.

“They come down and just veg out every day,” he said, nodding toward a cluster of mostly long-haired young men. “That’s why not too many respectable people hang out down here.”

At night, he continued, the pier tends to attract “a lot more of those kinds of people--rats, I guess you call them.”

“Pier rats” is a common term for young people who hang out at the Hermosa Beach Pier, although nobody seems to consider himself one. Police and others say the various types who use the pier keep within their own groups and generally don’t bother one another.

“A lot of the younger people who are out here on a daily basis use it like the old malt shop,” lifeguard Greg Allen said. “It’s just a place to hang around.”

Tim Way, 20, of Hermosa Beach, sat propped on his bicycle at the main entrance to the pier, talking with friends and observing the afternoon’s sights. He goes to the pier nearly every day, he said, to “kick back and enjoy the sun. It’s killer here. We got everything--girls, the sand, the beach, the water. Isn’t this the life?”

One of his friends, 18-year-old Tim (Spuds) Watts, said he lived under the pier for about a month before finding a permanent home, but it wasn’t always idyllic. “The police bug you too much under the pier,” he complained.

Although several pier regulars said that homeless people and transients often hang out on the pier, Public Safety Director Steve Wisniewski said they haven’t caused much trouble.

Most of the problems on and near the pier, he said, are alcohol-related, largely because several popular bars and clubs are nearby. Drugs, too, are common.

“From what I understand, you can get most any (drug) you want,” Wisniewski said, but he does not believe the drug problem is as serious as in other cities. Most drug arrests around the pier involve people who do not live in Hermosa Beach, he said.

On this particular weekend, some people on the pier did little to conceal their drug use. Several people--mostly teen-agers--could be seen smoking marijuana as openly as cigarettes.

One young, scraggly looking man walking down crowded Pier Avenue showed a surfer a fistful of what probably was hashish. “I’ve got to sell this, man,” he said. “It’s my only source of income.”

‘Territorial’ Fights

Drugs are not the only problem the police have had to deal with at the pier. Officers sometimes are called to break up fights among fishermen that “seem to be territorial in nature--’You got my spot’--or someone makes a remark,” Wisniewski said.

The anglers say they get along, help one another, give fishing tips and generally act like a family. The fishermen give the pier an ethnic flavor, and many languages are spoken--most often Spanish, English, Korean, Chinese and other Asian tongues.

Some say they fish for the sport, others to relax, catch food and even, as one man said, to get fertilizer. (He didn’t want to eat the mackerel he was catching, but said they would be good for his fruit trees.)

“You don’t get bored down here,” Juanita Dy, 57, said. “You meet a lot of people. You don’t have to catch a fish, but it’s fun to fight with a fish,” she said, pretending to be reeling in a big one.

Dy lives in her native Philippines part of the year and with her daughter in Hermosa Beach the rest of the time. She started fishing last June. Since then, she said, she has fished from the pier about six hours almost every day. “On rainy days I don’t come. I don’t like to get soggy.”

4-Year-Old Angler

Alex Campos has been fishing longer than Dy--and he’s only 4 years old. “We had him out here when he was in a crib--actually, since he was 8 months old,” said his father, Maurice Campos, 25, of Hawthorne. “We bought him a fishing pole when he was 2.”

Alex is a serious fisherman already. He ran back and forth between his father, who was fishing for mackerel at one corner, and his mother, who was snagging smelt for bait with a bare hook at another, checking their catches.

He found a smelt to his liking but had a little difficulty cutting it up. “Can you cut his head off it so I can dip blood on it?” he asked his dad.

His father obliged, noting that more experienced anglers put blood on mackerel, not smelt. “He’s quite serious about that,” Campos said. “He wants the best bait all the time.”

Campos said he has fished off the Hermosa pier for 10 years and he takes his family there three or four times a week. “As a matter of fact, we got fish thawing out that we caught last weekend to eat when we get home from this trip,” Campos said.

Pier visitors don’t have to catch fish to get dinner, however. Ray Park operates a fast-food stand and bait shop from a building at the end of the pier. From the same window where he sells frozen anchovies and other cold fish for bait, he serves cheeseburgers, drinks and store-bought cod.

Photos of Biggest Catches

“They want me to open 6 a.m., but I say, ‘no way.’ I can only take so much,” Park said. His stand usually opens about 10 a.m. and closes between 10 p.m. and midnight--depending on the weather--seven days a week.

On his front windows, he displays photos of the biggest catches hooked off the pier. And like a bartender, he knows many of the anglers’ stories.

“I have to take care of my customers,” he said, as he threw French fries to a flock of pigeons gathered around his station wagon.

Park’s wagon is the only vehicle with wheels permitted on the pier, but that doesn’t stop some skateboarders and bicyclers.

Although they annoy some people, the skateboarders’ tricks entertain others. Rick Pratt of San Pedro and his two small sons stopped at the base of the pier to watch the skateboarders bounce down the steps, roll up the walls and try handstands.

“They look awesome,” Joel Pratt, 6, said admiringly.

Sitting on a nearby bench, 18-year-old Rick TerBush of Bellflower was more interested in another view--the girls strolling by in bikinis.

Jackets and Beer Appear

But as the sunny afternoon turned into a chilly evening, the bikinis and skateboards were put away and the jackets and beer cans came out.

Jason Martyne, 19, of Torrance came with some friends to play his guitar. “I just came down here to get some peace, because I’ve been in my house all week making up guitar stuff.”

He said he spent last summer surfing and partying near the pier, picking up construction or housecleaning jobs now and then. “It’s an easy life down here.”

Describing his life style, Martyne--who has sandy-colored hair that reaches below the middle of his back--repeated a slogan that is written on the walls of the pier bait shop: “Hippiness is happiness.”

Throughout the evening, passers-by yelled to Martyne and his two companions, asking where the parties were. The three checked out nearly everyone who stepped onto the pier, sometimes standing on a bench to get a better view.

One foursome prompted looks from practically everyone on the pier.

Dressed in punk clothing, two of the men sported Mohawk haircuts, another’s head was shaved, and the fourth had a Mohawk with six 10-inch spikes.

One of them, 20-year-old George Frankforter, said he likes the Hermosa Pier better than the piers in neighboring cities. “Too many weirdos in Redondo,” Frankforter said, laughing.

At night, those fishing on the pier have to contend with the antics and noise of rowdy teen-agers, but they seem to take it in stride. On this night, half a dozen teen-age girls fishing off the side of the pier clearly had had too much to drink. Their hard rock music, foul language and screaming provided nearly the only noise in an otherwise quite night. The fishermen ignored the girls, even as they darted among the anglers.

“I do my thing, they do their thing--they drink and stuff,” said fisherman Joe Kang, who has been fishing from the pier for the past 10 years.

Kang, 30, of San Pedro said he has tried most of the other piers in the area, but likes Hermosa best. “It becomes like a habit, you’re more familiar with the area and the people,” he said.

He and other regulars said the Hermosa pier is longer than any other in Santa Monica Bay, so the water is deeper and the fishing better.

For fisherman Fransico Anzaldo of Los Angeles, the Hermosa pier was “the first pier I came to and I’m going to keep coming here. . . . I work 15, 12 hours a day sometimes and this is how I relax.”

Anzaldo, 32, brought his family and his neighbor’s family with him. But after a couple of hours, the two women and four of the five children had gone to sleep in their cars.

Eventually, the noisy teen-agers left, leaving only Anzaldo and a dozen other fishermen to enjoy the peaceful night. Leaning against the rails or relaxing in lawn chairs, some stared into the blackness or at the illuminated coastline.

Occasionally, somebody caught a fish and dropped it into a plastic grocery bag, where it flopped about. The crinkling of the bags with each jump dramatized the fish’s drawn-out death, but the anglers didn’t seem to notice.

Few fish were caught in the early morning hours, though. Every now and then, footsteps could be heard on the wooden planks as someone got up from his lawn chair to check his rods. Sometimes a line would be cast out again, the whir breaking the silence.

2 Fish in 3 Hours

After three hours, Anzaldo and his 6-year-old neighbor, Robert Chris Gounder, had caught only one fish each. Gounder’s father, David, does not like to fish but went to enjoy the scenery. The men planned to stay on the pier for only four hours that night before making the 45-minute drive home.

But at 7 a.m., with the sun rising over the Southern California Edison towers to the southeast, Anzaldo was still there. A few others in his group, including his wife, had awoke and were fishing as well. “She came to get us, and she got hooked,” Anzaldo said.

After the first 1 1/2 hours of daylight, he and his group had a cooler packed with about 30 mackerel. The fishing had improved dramatically, turning a passive sport into an active one. Some fishermen, especially those on the north side of the pier, seemed to be pulling up fish as soon as the hooks hit the water.

Harry Sloth, 64, of Lake Zurich, Ill., walked down the pier, briefcase in hand. He found a corner at the end of the pier and put together a disassembled fishing rod that he carried in the case.

“I use (the case) for work and then I put my tackle in there and I’m all set,” said Sloth, who was in the area visiting his son.

As the sun rose higher, the pier quickly filled up again. More fisherman joined the all-nighters; an elderly man checked each trash container for aluminum cans; joggers, bicyclists and strollers took the only path out over the ocean and back; several people ate breakfast; a few drank beer, some read the morning newspaper.

It was a new day on the Hermosa Beach Pier, but the routine was the same.