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HB asks RB to end fireworks show
by Robb Fulcher
Hermosa Beach officials have asked neighboring Redondo Beach to cancel its Independence Day fireworks shows, saying this year’s show helped add to the crowds that choked Hermosa’s seaside neighborhoods with rowdy parties, public drinking and, in some cases, fistfights.
City council members and police unveiled their hopes for a fireworks kibosh Friday, at an informal City Hall meeting with six residents who complained of noisiness and rowdiness from several party houses, during the Fourth of July and on other occasions.
The residents were told that Hermosa Mayor JR Reviczky had telephoned Redondo Mayor Greg Hill to ask about a possible end to the fireworks shows in Redondo’s King Harbor.
Uh, no
Hill said he saw no reason to end the shows.
"I don’t think the fireworks show was a contributing factor to the problems in Hermosa," Hill said on Monday.
"We had very few problems in Redondo," Hill said. "We had record crowds, our parking lots were full, and the whole thing was really quite reserved. It was a family affair."
Hill said crowds flocked to Hermosa because of its reputation as a party town. He pointed to the widespread popularity of the three-year-old Pier Plaza, which draws revelers from the South Bay and beyond on weekend nights, easily replacing downtown Manhattan as the young people’s party ground.
"They have a problem down there that has nothing to do with fireworks," Hill said.
"If you look at the Pier Plaza there’s a bar every five feet. Let’s face it, the word has gotten out that Hermosa is a great place to party and pick up girls, and that’s where they go," Hill said.
"I sympathize with [Hermosa officials], but they have created the problem," Hill said. "They have to decide how they’re going to manage their business district."
Hill said he visited Hermosa during the Fourth and saw "two fistfights within a 30-minute span."
"It sounds like [Hermosa police] were keeping basic crowd control, but they weren’t enforcing public drinking," Hill said.
Managing the crowd
Hermosa Police Chief Val Straser said that strict enforcement of public drinking laws would have been a bad crowd control strategy down in Hermosa.
"When you’re dealing with that magnitude of a crowd, they’re not going to line up like good little ducks and get their citations and go home," Straser said.
The police chief said a Fourth of July riot in 1974 was touched off when a Hermosa officer hopped up onto the Strand wall and told a large group of people that they were all under arrest. Rioters threw rocks and beer bottles full of sand at police, broke windows and tried to overturn police cars.
"That kind of thing usually starts with one specific incident, then it goes from the epicenter and mushrooms out," Straser said.
He said that the fireworks show drew "waves" of people to Hermosa.
"They showed up in north Hermosa thinking we had fireworks, and then they migrated south along the Strand, and went as far south along the beach as they could, and after the show they migrated back through town again," he said.
The fireworks seekers, mostly families, apparently caused no trouble, but added their numbers to an already swollen crowd, Straser said.
"Did they cause our revelry here? No," he said. "But they didn’t help us any."
"Absolutely frightened"
Police said this year’s Fourth was louder and wilder than the year before and, like last year, officers made a handful of arrests for incidents such as fist fighting.
"At Eighth and 10th streets we had roaming skinheads just starting fights with people," Straser said during the residents’ meeting.
But for the most part, he said, noise, rowdiness and public drinking were the biggest problems.
"I don’t know of anyone getting injured. There was no one knifed, none of my personnel were injured, there were no windows broken," Straser summed up. "What we had was a major, major nuisance."
"I was absolutely frightened this Fourth of July," said Andrea L. Rich, the president and director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a Hermosa resident who attended the Friday meeting via speakerphone.
Straser said that next year police will begin corralling rowdiness in the seaside neighborhoods earlier in the day, in hopes that the vastly outnumbered officers will be able to establish more control over the eventual level of rowdiness and noise.
In response to residents’ questions, Straser said he does not want to supplement his police force with out-of-town officers for the Fourth. He said officers can lose restraint while keeping order in areas where they do not regularly work.
"You ask me to go to Manhattan or Huntington and clean up the town, I’ll gladly go," Straser said. "When other agencies come in, people can get hurt real bad."
Law with teeth
Straser also told the residents that City Attorney Michael Jenkins has begun a review of Hermosa’s ordinance on amplified noise, "to put some teeth into it."
Mayor JR Reviczky said well-to-do residents may not be dissuaded by a fine. Indeed, an officer approached one man, a Strand resident, as he was setting up a professional sound system, and the man asked, "Can I just pay the citation now?"
Causes and conditions
Council members said Hermosa has become a Fourth of July party hub in part because of the fireworks show, and in part because of the topography of the Strand.
Councilwoman Julie Oakes pointed out that the Hermosa Strand sits level with the sand, allowing parties to spill from Strand houses onto the Strand itself, and from there onto the beach. Throughout Redondo and Manhattan, the Strand is separated from the beach by steep slopes that would prevent large parties from spilling onto the beach.
Councilwoman Kathy Dunbabin once again raised questions about the 26-year-old Fourth of July "Ironman" chugalug, in which about 150 people run on the beach, paddle in the ocean and return to a private front yard to down a six-pack of beer and try, with little success, not to vomit.
"I think the Ironman needs to come into this too," Dunbabin said. "The police department has to put a lot of people there, and the department is held hostage until about 2 p.m. If they didn’t have to be there they could be down on the Strand shutting things down and keeping things together."
Police said that this year’s holiday troublemakers apparently had not been associated with the Ironman, as they have in recent years. ER