SeeCalifornia.com

At 5 p.m. PST on May 24, 2019 something wonderful happened — the Seal Beach Pier reopened. It had been closed a number of years after a fire destroyed the shuttered & vacated Ruby’s restaurant people had grown so fond of visiting for hamburgers & french fries, salads and delicious shakes. No restaurant had stepped into those ruby, glass slippers to fill Ruby’s void when the fire broke out on May 20, 2016.

If you look at the 100+ year history of California’s piers you learn than these structures built from beaches into the sea have required much maintenance, reconstruction and rebuilding. Some piers such as  Aliso Beach Pier never return.

Many of us fortunate enough to live near piers mark points in our lives through pier experiences and memories. My family has enjoyed Seal Beach Pier and many others through the years and I nearly shed a tear looking at old pictures taken through time. One showed my mother during a Main Street Black Friday shopping spree, completed with a stroll on Seal Beach Pier. Having spent some years in the Midwest, we felt blessed to enjoy shirt-sleeve weather on that balmy day in late November. My mom is gone now.

From oil workers departing the pier by boat and heading to or returning from offshore platforms, to fishermen, lovers hand-in-hand, tourists, or locals who walk up and down the pier several times daily for exercise, there are so many fascinating people and activities to take in.

SPECIAL EVENTS with Seal Beach Pier as an anchor have included the Tree Lighting Ceremony, Christmas Parade, annual car show, Lions Fish Fry and kids’ fishing derby. Read more…>