Waterfront Fixture Is Losing Its Moorings

I was at the Boathouse the other day, looking out at the ocean and waiting for my wife to join me for lunch. It was an overcast day, and the light kept changing as clouds moved over the face of the sea, alternately transforming it from gloom to gold.

The restaurant sits on the edge of Santa Monica Pier and offers one of the best views on the waterfront. In addition to the ever-changing ocean, there’s a wide expanse of beach that lures an eclectic mix of surf riders, sunbathers and walkers to the sand, no matter what the weather’s like.

I don’t have to dress up to go to the Boathouse. On this day I was wearing old Levi’s, a T-shirt that says, “Real Men Don’t Ask Directions,” and sneakers without socks. I remember that specifically because when Cinelli arrived, she looked at my feet and said, with no small measure of disgust, “Returning to our hippie roots, are we?”

The point is, the Boathouse is a comfortable place with edible food and a view that’s always changing. It’s a family affair that has been there for 50 years, and it has always attracted a friendly mix of tourists, locals and guys like me, who don’t always wear socks.

There’s nothing trendy about the Boathouse, and it isn’t listed in a lot of the restaurant guidebooks. That’s partially because nothing on the menu is in French. That’s fine with me. I can do without coq de bruyere most of the time, and make do with fish and chips, which are terrific at the Boathouse.

So why--given its comfort, its view and its longevity--is it probably about to become a memory? Good question.

For the last few years, Pier Restoration Corp., a Santa Monica city agency, has been trying to replace the Boathouse with a chain franchise that would generate more money for the city. But Naia Sheffield, whose family has owned the place since 1952, says no way.

“I want my damned restaurant!” she said to me one day over breakfast. Outside, an unrelenting sun shone down on the ocean, setting it afire and proclaiming its permanence in glowing tones. “I love this place and I’ll do everything I can, I mean everything, to keep it! I’m not going to roll over. I’m here to stay.”

She’s a woman in her late 20s, full of angry determination, who is not about to play dead to the PRC.

Marches, petitions, appearances before the Santa Monica City Council and finally lawsuits, filed in state and federal courts, have characterized Sheffield’s effort to keep the Boathouse alive.

But time may be running out.

A few days ago, L.A. Superior Court Judge Diana Wheatley ruled that the days of the Boathouse were over and it had to vacate the premises. That’s legalese for “Pack your frying pans and move on.”

One man, Rick Howard, was moved to write poetry about the battle:

It would truly be a shame

If they replaced me with a chain.

I’m a restaurant on the pier,

The Boathouse is my name.

Not exactly Dylan Thomas, but it gets the message across.

When the Boathouse lease ended about three years ago, bidding was opened to anyone interested. That, supposedly, is standard procedure. The Bubba Gump company, Landry’s Seafood Restaurants and the Lobster, submitted proposals. So did Sheffield, who was operating on a month-to-month basis.

The problem, said PRC Chairman Michael Klein, was that hers was the worst of the proposals. She wanted a motorcycle theme for a revamped Boathouse that had nothing to do with the kind of family restaurant the PRC wanted. Ultimately, the Lobster, which runs a restaurant of the same name at the head of the pier, pulled out of the running and the board chose Bubba Gump.

Sheffield has been served with an eviction notice and, barring a miracle, it’s goodbye, old-place-to-go-without-socks.

“I wish that their bid had been a good one,” Klein says of the Boathouse proposal, “but it wasn’t.”

Some time ago, the venerable old Lobster Shack restaurant was replaced with the glitzy, overpriced Lobster at the head of the pier. And now the Boathouse appears to be on its way out. I don’t know what Bubba Gump is all about, but already I don’t like it.

I guess I can appreciate an effort to upgrade, but it saddens me to see a place rich with tradition disappear from the waterfront. The city could have given the Boathouse a little more of an edge to stay where it is, considering its 50 years on the pier. But I also feel that Sheffield could have come up with something better than a motorcycle theme for a place that has nothing to do with motorcycles.

As far as I’m concerned, the whole thing isn’t really about money or upgrading, but about saving a restaurant where a guy without socks can eat fish and chips in comfort while looking out at an ocean that is always new, but always old.

The PRC may think it’s just doing good business, but what it’s doing is tearing the heart out of a house of memories, and that’s a rotten shame.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes. com.