Here are some fun facts you can use to impress people at parties:
- Hermosa is Spanish for beautiful (the feminine version).
- HB’s has played sister city to Loreto, Baja California, since 1967.
- The Lighthouse, a Pier Avenue venue still in business today, was the premiere jazz club in Southern California in the ‘50s and it regularly hosted plenty of cool dudes including Benny Carter, Max Roach, Hampton Hawes, and Miles Davis.
- HB was also a punk rock hotbed. Black Flag got together in HB in the ‘70s, but played their first show in Redondo Beach. Headquarters for their record label SST was located in the old Baptist church on Manhattan Avenue for a few years. Several students at MB’s Mira Costa High were inspired by the group to start The Descendants. Members of Pennywise went to area high schools and recorded their first record on a HB-based label in the early ‘90s.
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- Jay Leno is a part owner of HB’s Comedy & Magic Club, which he often uses as a testing ground for “Tonight Show” monologue material.
- Several segments of the Fox hit “The OC” were actually filmed in The LAC. Because union rules made it too expensive to film outside LA County, HB often subbed for the show’s Newport Beach setting.
- HB proclaims itself the official birthplace of surfing in California and established a Surfers Walk Of Fame on the pier in 2003. One honoree is Dale “The Hawk” Velzy, who was the first person to sponsor surfers, advertise the sport in a big way, and commercially shape redwood/balsa combo boards. His custom boards originally sold for $75, but now collectors shell out thousands for vintage Velzys.
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