A Site That the Pounding Sea Can’t Conquer

“I don’t know how you won the war -- you can’t even catch a mackerel!” says John, the German, who is 74, gruff and lugs his fishing pole with a heavy limp.

His friend Kuni Miyake only grins. “He’s always telling me, ‘I don’t see how you won the war,’ ” grouses Miyake, who is 87.

John was behind the German front, a teenager not yet of the age to fight. Miyake, of Japanese descent, was interned, then drafted, and flew missions to Germany as part of the U.S. Army’s 13th Airborne Division.

Now they spar only with words on the Redondo Beach Pier, passing their latter years in the idle chase for mackerel, bonito and an occasional yellowtail.

Long past cultural sensitivities, they savor their brusque humor. As many days as they can, they convene at the rail with other rough-hewn regulars who account for the color of one of the Southland coastline’s oldest -- and most beleaguered -- piers.

The structure is peopled with characters, distinct for a certain unvarnished charm, despite the artsy design of the reconstruction after the big storm and fire of 1988. The pier dates back well over a century, if you allow for the fact that it has been rebuilt, in various forms, at least nine times, according to one historian. It supports a hodgepodge of shops and restaurants that extend well out over the water.

The south flank juts straight into the sea. Spliced to that is the U-shaped horseshoe pier, which leads to another piece of the complex: the International Walk, a promenade of lobster tanks, fresh fish counters and bars that rim a pocket of boat slips.

Walking the decks, you can’t take in the entire scene at once. There is a touch of mystery to the unseen corners, sounds of crashing surf and unusual aesthetic lines. The pilings of the horseshoe pier form a cage around a section of beach.

At night, restaurant lights gleam on the water. Salt winds blow live jazz and rock ‘n’ roll. A cavernous room built into the coast, below the main deck, houses a vast penny arcade, thundering with its own noises.

The pier seems to emerge from the shoreline -- from a long sweep of beach -- as if a part of nature, a squarish growth of wood and glass that has always been there. It draws people and sometimes takes hold of them.

Barry Nichols started coming to the pier when he was no more than 5. For much of his adult life he worked at Zeppy’s Pizza on the horseshoe, and finally, seven years ago, he bought the establishment. The walls are arrayed with impressive old fishing photos -- a giant mako shark landed nearby, a bonito the size of a man’s torso, a 17-foot great white weighing more than 2 tons.

“I don’t see anything that competes with this,” Nichols, 47, says of the pier area, more sprawling and unpretentious than its rival, the Santa Monica Pier, to the north.

Tony Trutanich also fell in love with the pier as a child. He grew up in San Pedro and came to the pier to get clams at the fresh-fish markets. Fifty years ago, Trutanich established a two-story, kiosk-shaped restaurant, Old Tony’s, that remains a landmark. He also operates Tony’s Fish Market, a restaurant with views of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and raves about the beauty of the setting.

“How many places can you go and have a lovely dinner, and see the surf pounding on the beach, and see the boats out there, and the sunsets?” he asks.

But like all things in nature, the pier has its cycles. During hot summers, it thrives. Most merchants reap all their profits from June through Labor Day. The rest of the year they languish.

Winters bring battering storms. Histories of Redondo Beach are filled with accounts of destruction, pier lumber being scattered like litter on the beach.

The first pier, known as Wharf No. 1, was completed in 1889, when the developing town was a resort destination served by the Santa Fe railroad. The lavish Hotel Redondo opened near the beachside rail terminus, boasting a fireplace in every room. A special promotion allowed travelers to come from as far as Kansas City for only $1, says Mary Ann Keating, chairwoman of the Redondo Beach Historical Commission. “You could take the train out, go out on the pier ... and get on a steamship and go anywhere in the world,” she says.

Two other wharves were added, but a storm in 1915 destroyed Wharf No. 1. Wharf No. 2 was badly damaged by a storm in 1919 and torn down soon afterward. Construction and destruction recurred even after a breakwater was built around nearby King Harbor in the late 1930s.

The Arctic storm of 1988 packed 20-foot waves. “It was coming over the top of the jetty and knocking boulders right out of the jetty,” fisherman Dave Baker remembers. “A lot of the fishing boats ... it turned them right over, sunk ‘em.”

Four months later, electrical wiring damaged by the storm shorted out, causing a huge fire. A third of the shops were destroyed. The city spent $12 million, and took seven years, to rebuild the horseshoe.

Heading into winter, merchants are frustrated. Crowds have never completely come back, they said. Many business owners yearn for the days when foot traffic was so dense “you’d walk out and couldn’t see Hotdog-On-A-Stick” across the boardwalk, as kite shop owner Tom Fine recalls.

“We’re doing about a quarter of what we actually could do,” he says. “Until we get the end of the pier like it was before, it seems like we’re all just waiting.”

To see video online, go to www.latimes.com/surroundings.