Hermosa Beach Historical Museum
Hermosa Beach is one of the three beach cities of the South Bay – Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach being the other two. Honestly, it's my favorite of the cities. It's kind of the in-between of everything, and the beach itself is the one closest to where I grew up and live.
From knowing it the past twenty-four years, I've seen how it's changed – shops have come and go, things have been remodeled, redesigned, the pier now has a four-way crosswalk... It's not for better or worse changes, just changes.
I was biking to the beach with my friend Chloe this past weekend, going down Pier Avenue and passing the building where I once took some creative performance summer school, and saw the sign out front saying that the Hermosa Beach Historical Museum was open from 2 – 4pm. Lucky for us, it was 2:30pm.
We locked up the bikes and went inside.
The museum is pretty small, but it hosts a large amount of historical preservatives. My favorite part was seeing the old pictures of the pier. I thought it had changed in my lifetime, but seeing what it was like even forty years ago was drastically different – it had a bowling alley and dance room! And you used to be able to park your car in the place that's just for walking now.
There are a lot of surfboards and highlights of the famous surfers that came out of this area. The historical society also has a gift shop available.
The hours this time capsule is open is limited to Wednesdays from 10am – 12pm, and Saturdays and Sundays from 2 – 4pm. However, you can explore a lot of the history and information from the museum on their website here.
It's honestly more of a fun side-tour on the way down to the beach (takes about twenty minutes to walk through and look at everything). It was really enlightening though to discover more insight to what kind of culture and lifestyle this beach town came from, and it was nice to see everything in person – like the old jukebox – and talk to the nice docents. So if you can, make the stop and go inside. It's worth it.
A little sidenote – I felt like I had known Chloe for a lot longer of a time when we first became friends. When I saw a historical picture in the museum, I noticed that their faces looked eerily similar to ours. Except mine was in the form of a surfer boy and hers in the form of a beach girl. Apparently our friendship/relationship has transcended time from our past lives – see last picture below for reference ;)
