Deck the Pier : Manhattan Beach Shoots the Works for the Holidays

While many Easterners were huddled by the fire, perhaps roasting chestnuts and drinking eggnog Thursday night, residents of upscale Manhattan Beach were starting a new holiday tradition--a Christmas fireworks show over the sand.

Red, green and silver blasts of fireworks soared into the sky over the Pacific from the end of the 1,200-foot-long Manhattan Beach Pier as a band, whose members sported reindeer antlers and Santa hats, tooted Dixieland music and the “Hyperion Outfall Serenaders” sang carols to a crowd of more than 3,000.

The show was an oddball twist to the holiday season--even by standards set by other beach cities in the area that do such things as annually welcome Santa Claus to town with parades featuring decorated yachts.

The $8,000 fireworks display was organized by the owner of Manhattan Coolers, a trendy local restaurant, and paid for with the help of three other beach eateries.

The 15-minute aerial show was the first ever held on the 75-year-old pier, according to city officials who, in the past, have balked at shooting fireworks off the pier on the traditional day for such pyrotechnics: the Fourth of July. The warm weather can attract an unruly crowd to the city of 30,000, Mayor Connie Sieber said.

But when restaurant owner Pete Moffett suggested a Christmastime show--and promised it wouldn’t cost the city a dime--officials decided that if Manhattan can light up Rockefeller Center for Christmas, Manhattan Beach can light up its pier.

“I figured everybody would be in a good mood and it would attract a nice family crowd at this time of year,” Moffett explained as he handed out paper towels from his restaurant’s men’s room for spectators to use to sop up the evening dew from chairs set up in front of the pier.

The idea of Yuletide fireworks left some people cold, however.

“It strikes me as a little odd,” admitted building contractor Mike Maurry, 27, who was wearing shorts as he rolled up on his skateboard. “It’s kind of weird for this time of year.”

George Shannon of Downey, who stopped off on his way home from work with a co-worker from his computer company, agreed.

“For me, fireworks is not appropriate for Christmas,” he said.

But most in the crowd said they preferred watching pyro-technician Leonard Knight touch off the 453 aerial bombshells to watching President Bush light the nation’s Christmas tree on TV.

Said Mike Musulin, 35, a local subcontractor: “They’d be better the Fourth of July. But they’re green and red, so what the heck?”

“For a first-time effort, it rated four stars,” said Rick Perrotta of Manhattan Beach. “The fireworks went up to the sound of electronic Christmas music. It was great.”