Santa Monica Pier and Beach

How to Get There

Get on CA-110 from W 1st St. Take I-10 W to 4th St in Santa Monica. Take exit 1A from I-10 W. Drive to Colorado Ave.

The Pier

The Santa Monica Pier is a large double-jointed pier at the foot of Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, California. It contains a small amusement park, concession stands, and areas for views and fishing. The pier contains Pacific Park, a family amusement park with its solar panelled Ferris wheel. The brightly lit wheel can be seen from a distance. It also has an original carousel hippodrome from the 1920s, the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium operated by Heal the Bay, shops, entertainers, a video arcade, a trapeze school, pubs, and restaurants. The pier's west end is a popular location for anglers. The pier is a venue for outdoor concerts, movies, and other activities.

Pacific Park

Pacific Park is an oceanfront amusement park located in Santa Monica, California. The park, located on the Santa Monica Pier, looks directly out on the Pacific Ocean, in the direction of Catalina Island. It is the only amusement park on the West Coast of the United States located on a pier and LA's only admission-free park. There are a total of twelve rides in Pacific Park, including the world's first and only solar powered Ferris wheel that provides a view of the Pacific Ocean and a roller coaster that circles the majority of the park. It has appeared in over 500 movies and television shows such as Fat Albert, Hannah Montana, Hannah Montana: The Movie, Kidsongs, 90210, Bean, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, as well as the popular video game Grand Theft Auto V.

History

Santa Monica Municipal Pier opened in 1909; it was primarily to carry sewer pipes out beyond the breakers and had no amenities. In 1916 Charles I. D. Looff, who built Coney Island's first carousel, started construction on an adjacent pier known as the Pleasure Pier, also called Newcomb Pier, for use as an amusement park. The two piers are now both considered to be part of Santa Monica Pier. Attractions on the Pleasure Pier eventually included the Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome building (which now houses the current carousel and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places), the Blue Streak Racer wooden roller coaster (which was purchased from the defunct Wonderland amusement park in San Diego), the Whip, merry-go-rounds, Wurlitzer organs, and a funhouse. The Pleasure Pier thrived during the 1920s but faded during the Great Depression. During the 1930s, the pier was mainly used as a ferry landing, while most of the pier was closed down and its attractions sold off.

Over the next several decades the city of Santa Monica proposed various plans to tear down Newcomb Pier. The city council approved a plan to replace the pier with a resort island in Santa Monica Bay. Local activists formed Save Santa Monica Bay and shot down that plan, and in 1973, the city formally revoked a standing order to demolish the pier. The city acquired ownership of the privately owned pier in summer 1974. In the 1980s, the pier was almost destroyed by winter storms. In 1983, the city formed a Pier Restoration and Development Task Force (now the Pier Restoration Corporation), tasked with returning the pier to its former glory. Summer music concerts were held on the pier.

In 1989, the Pier Restoration Corporation decided to "make the pier a year-round commercial development with amusement rides, gift shops, nightclubs with live entertainment and restaurants" that would be "reminiscent of its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s". The current 2-acre (0.81 ha) park opened in 1996 as a full-scale family amusement park.

Rides

The park is "non-gated" and there is no charge for admission; individual rides charge a fee. There are a dozen rides as well as midway games, food outlets, and shopping. A Seaside Pavilion event space opened in 2009 for corporate and private events. This is a list of rides in operation at Pacific Park as of 2016.

Santa Monica State Beach

The beach is located along Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica. It is 3.5 miles (5.6 km) long and has parks, picnic areas, playgrounds, restrooms, as well as manned lifeguard stations, the Muscle Beach, bike rentals, concessions, a few hotels, a bike path, and wooden pathways for warm days and beachgoers with disabilities. Visitor activities include volleyball, surfing, stand up paddleboarding, and swimming.

At the foot of Colorado Avenue, through the famous arch and sign, lies the historic Santa Monica Pier, which dates from 1909. The pier has a National Historic Landmark - the 1922 Looff Hippodrome Carousel. Just south of the pier volleyball courts is International Chess Park with public chess tables and a human-scale chessboard set into the sidewalk. Palisades Park is located atop Santa Monica's cliffs, providing a vantage point to see the Santa Monica Beach and the Pacific Ocean.

In popular culture

The Santa Monica Pier has been used as a filming location for many decades. The amusement park attractions as they existed in 1930s are seen prominently in the Our Gang short Fish Hooky (1933). It also appears prominently in Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), Quicksand (1950), Elmer Gantry (1960), 1941 (1979 film), The Opposite of Sex (1998), They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Night Tide (1961), Bean (1997), The Sting (1973), Farewell, My Lovely (1975) with Robert Mitchum, Her (2013), A Night at the Roxbury (1998), Mighty Joe Young (1998), Miracle Beach, Forrest Gump (there is a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company Restaurant on the pier), Not Another Teen Movie, Iron Man, Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, Dark Ride, Cellular, The Hottie and the Nottie, Falling Down, Ruthless People (the pier is the site of the movie's climactic final scene), Love Stinks, Hancock, the indie romantic comedy She Wants Me, and Hannah Montana: The Movie (the scene with Lilly's birthday party). During the earthquake in the movie 2012, the pier can be seen sinking beneath the waves. The Natalie Wood film Inside Daisy Clover (1965) features the pier in the beginning of the picture. The pier was also featured in the 2012 film version of Rock of Ages. The Glenn Miller Story with Jimmy Stewart has a sequence toward the beginning where he goes to the "La Monica Ballroom" for an audition. The pier is also featured in the 2018 film Pacific Rim Uprising, starring John Boyega, where a kaiju attack destroys the pier, as well as the entire city. Jack Dawson in Titanic referenced the pier, which would have been just three years old in 1912, when Titanic sank.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Santa Monica Pier", "Pacific Park", and "Santa Monica State Beach", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0