Lobsterfest puts Redondo on a seafood diet
by Jason Dietrich
Thousands
made the year's last visit to the harborfront's Seaside Lagoon to crack shells
and snap legs at the sixth annual Redondo Beach Lobster Festival this past weekend.
The three-day festival of rock'n roll, craft and community booths and crates of nervous lobsters brought a diverse crowds down to the waterfront for an afternoon of fun in the sun.
"Everyone had a great time. The bands were a lot of fun and the weather was wonderful, which really helped us out," said Chamber of Commerce head Marna Smeltzer.
Friday night, Dave Mason, founding member of Traffic and former member of Fleetwood Mac played a few old favorites and some of his newer tunes. Rockabilly rebel and former Stray Cat Lee Rocker jumped and jived Saturday night, followed by Chuck Negron from Three Dog Night who played more than an hour of the band's classics. Sunday afternoon, surf rockers the Chantays strummed hits like "Pipeline" before the Nelsons took over.
But the event's biggest draw were an estimated 15,000 one-and-a-quarter pound Maine lobsters flown in from the east coast. Unlike the local variety, which don't have meaty claws, Maine lobsters have heavy pincers capable of delivering a power pinch.
With their claws bound by blue rubber bands, they were dumped by the trayfull into a trailer-mounted steaming rig capable of cooking up 2,000 of the critters an hour. Quality Seafood chefs supervised the lobster steaming, serving up tons of the crustaceans as centerpieces of the $12 lobsters dinners for which the festival is named. Kincaids, Joe's Crab Shack, Louise's Trattoria, and other food vendors manned booths selling everything from corn on the cob to egg rolls.
Derek Michaud, traveled from Orr Island Maine to sell his family's trademark seafood chowder at the Lobsterfest. Michaud, a part-time classical pianist, handed out sample bowls of the vacuum-packed soup to appreciative patrons.
"They asked me if I wanted to come to California to sell chowder, and I jumped," said Michaud.
California Harley Davidson, which helped sponsor the event, raffled off a Harley Sportster, and welcomed bikers with a motorcycles-only parking area. Attendees who chose to bicycle or drive down to the event could still get a thrill by shimmying up a rock-climbing wall or taking to the sky in a trampoline-assisted bungee swing. ER
