Many people of Seal Beach, especially in Old Town, say they like to consider it “Mayberry By The Sea.”
It’s a nice idea, considering the fictional Mayberry seemed to stand for the simple life in a place where people are generally friendly and most activities have an idyllic quality to them.
It’s easy to recall the classic TV show’s opening credits with that tune whistled over the scene of Sheriff Andy (Griffith) Taylor and his son Opie (Ron Howard) skipping along to the side of a lake to go fishing as father and son often do.
Similar to Mayberry, Seal Beach has its own idyllic fishing spot.
It’s called the Seal Beach Pier and generally speaking, it is often a pleasure to see the various fisher-folk engaged in their favorite activity, giving the pier and Old Town a sense of a simple pleasure still available to us in this high-tech world.
People have been fishing on the Seal Beach Pier through its various incarnations—even when it was a short, almost makeshift structure in the early 1900s.
I recall a historic photo of the pier that featured a man in suit and bowler hat fishing on the little pier that is now long gone.
Thirty years ago, a large portion of the Seal Beach pier as we now know it collapsed in a major storm on March 2 of 1983.
The citizens of the city rallied to save the pier that had always been a large part of the seaside town’s identity.
They held bake sales and other “Mayberryish” events to raise money to rebuild the pier where it was damaged. Their fundraising efforts could only go so far.
They were short by about $200,000 to get the work done. Their only hope seemed to be to cut some kind of deal with the state of California.
On Dec. 12, 1983, the city entered into an agreement with the Department of Fish and Game. Seal Beach would get the $200,000 to help rebuild the pier.
The caveat was that Seal Beach would allow unrestricted fishing on the pier for 25 years. Perhaps the Fish and Game people were fans of “The Andy Griffith Show.”
They certainly did seem to think it important enough to have fishing on the pier to shell out nearly a quarter million clams to ensure it.
“As part of the terms and conditions, the city agreed not to establish fishing restrictions on the pier at any time except when necessary for maintenance, repair, public safety, and security or for the protection of the structure or facilities,” said a report by Patrick Gallegos, Seal Beach administration manager. When the agreement expired in 2008, the city extended it for another 25 years.
It was last year, in 2012, that there began to be grumblings from some non-fisher-folk that they wanted to restrict fishing on the pier.
Members of the Seal Beach Lions Club decried the fact that some of the fisher-folk had been using the wooden memorial benches to cut their bait.
Other people expressed thoughts that they did not want fishing near where Ruby’s Restaurant had been.
One member of the City Council, Mayor Gary Miller, who represents College Park East, about as far from the pier as you can get in Seal Beach, asked if there was any way for Seal Beach to buy out of its contract with Fish and Game.
He said he wanted to know if there would be any benefit in getting out of the contract.
It seems a bit of a large expense for such a cash-strapped town.
Meanwhile, City Attorney Quinn Barrow answered by saying said he believed the California Coastal Commission would want to ensure visitor-serving access to the pier.
He predicted the city would have to allow fishing. He did say the city would have some legal control over fishing on the basis of “safety and sanitation.”
The Lions have done a good job of refurbishing the damaged memorial benches.
It was a noble effort and one of their many.
However, some might consider people who fish more important than inanimate objects.
Regardless, not all the fisher-folk on the pier cut their bait on the benches.
Despite that, there will probably always be a few who will.
Maybe it would be best to move the benches off the pier and replace some of them with cheap, non-memorial benches that could easily be replaced.
Even the mostly memorial benches will degrade from exposure to constant sunlight and ocean moisture on the pier.
The memorial benches could be sprinkled around places like the boardwalk, Eisenhower Park and even Arbor Dog Park in Mayor Gary Miller’s district.
Restricting where and when people can fish on the pier seems like a lost cause.
Who is going to enforce it?
I would hope that would not be left to the Seal Beach Lifeguards.
I would think it preferable to have them concentrate on watching the ocean instead of monitoring latter day Andies and Opies for “fishing over the line!”
As for keeping them away from the “restaurant area,” well, we don’t have a restaurant out there right now.
The Seal Beach City Council is searching for a “family friendly” restaurant to put out there at the end of the pier.
The last one, “family friendly” Ruby’s, could not seem to sustain financial success.
I don’t think you can blame the fisher-folk for Ruby’s decline.
Ruby’s management seems to have had many more obstacles.
Most people I talked to in recent weeks, since Ruby’s closed, said it was just too far out on the pier.
Lack of promotion might have been another factor.
Perhaps there is a better use for a business at the end of the Seal Beach pier that might be more financially feasible.
Did I hear someone say, “bait shop?”
Dennis Kaiser is the editor of the Sun Newspapers.
