Along The Strand, the line between work and play blurs.

While some people call in sick to the office and sneak off to the beach, other people have all the luck--the beach is where they work.

“Hell, I get paid to get a tan,” boasted Peter Metropoulos, 20, who teaches volleyball to youngsters each morning at Manhattan Beach.

From an ocean-front snack bar at El Porto to a windsurfers rental trailer at San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach, there’s work at the beach for a small group of South Bay residents whose lunch hour often includes a swim in the Pacific.

“Where else could a retired person like me go where I can get sunshine, look at the (people) on the beach and fish at the same time,” asked Frank, who flips burgers at the snack bar on the Hermosa Beach pier.

On Mondays, Frank, who goes by just his first name, runs a betting pool for pier fishermen with the prize going to the one who catches the largest halibut. It’s his way of getting the week off to a fast start.

Some of the workers who toil between the water and The Strand can balk at the suggestion that, well, their jobs aren’t much like working at all.

“You know, it’s not all looking at the bodies on the beach. We do work hard here,” said John Kam, 17, who manages the Torrance Beach snack bar, which together with a stand in El Porto are the only concessions in the South Bay on the ocean side of The Strand.

Kam describes his snack bar as the nerve center of the strip, the first stop regulars make on their way from the street to the sand. While ordering a soft drink or ice cream, a customer can find out which of his buddies are surfing, tanning or playing volleyball.

Having a monopoly doesn’t hurt business either, Kam conceded. County ordinance prohibits entrepreneurial-minded beach bums from walking up and down the strip selling food and drink. As one county official put it, that might “disturb our patrons” and also add to garbage on the sand.

One person not likely to get too upset about the restriction is Willie Iverson, who for the last 13 years has made a living by cleaning up the beach in his tractor-drawn sifter, which filters sand and collects trash.

“I don’t like being cooped up inside somewhere. Here at the beach there’s fresh air and something new all the time,” said the county sanitation worker as he described how recently he nearly ran over a guy who had buried himself in the sand at El Porto.

Iverson patrols the sand between El Segundo and Hermosa Beach all year round, but in the summer he’s helped by a cadre of teen-agers who scour Manhattan Beach on foot four days a week, sticking empty cans and pieces of chewed gum into their burlap sacks.

The litter patrol, 11 strong this year, is paid for by the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce and private donations. Although picking up garbage all day tends to get a little monotonous, Leonard Sims, a three-summer veteran of the program, said being on the sand and near the ocean inspires him to write songs for his rock band while he is on the job.

Despite being on the beach four days a week, when these kids get their days off in the middle of the week, they do what hordes of office workers do on the weekend: head for the ocean. “I go to the beach every single day and surf,” intoned John Zask, 14, with almost religious fervor.

Some beach workers have become hermits in their coastal paradise. “It drives me nuts when I have to go to town--all that noise and cars,” said Larry Lewis, who sells bait and tackle out of a storage shed on the Manhattan Beach pier. He was in the bait shack Monday afternoon, his day off, watching television.

On the sandy side of The Strand, the world looks different.

“Basically, everyone’s at the beach to have fun” and even if you’re working, you adopt the same attitude, said Chris Gilbert, who rents sail boards at Cabrillo Beach and gives windsurfing lessons.

“It’s a whole different lifestyle,” said Shannon Carr-Davey, a lifeguard in Hermosa Beach. Carr-Davey, one of a handful of women among the 75 lifeguards who work the stretch of beach between Playa del Rey and San Pedro, has been at the job for 11 years. “This is the best job in the world. No doubt about it.”

Out on the sand, the line between work and play becomes blurred by the laughs of bathers and the yells of volleyball players. And even a reporter can tell you that spending a day on the beach, on the job, just doesn’t quite feel like work.