Sunday Concerts: The Ultimate Beach Experience in Hermosa Beach CA

Live Bands on the Pier Are the Draw But the Main Attraction is the Picnic and the People

One of the coolest things about living in LA’s South Bay Beach Cities are the Summer Concert Series in Hermosa Beach. They take place every Sunday afternoon, ending just after sunset, on the sand just south of the Hermosa Beach Pier.

It is a weekend highlight, an outdoor social gathering, a modern-day Beach Blanket Bingo.

PubClubbers meeting in groups but to get a prome spots, many people puts down towels and blankets early in the afternoon or even late that morning. Then people meet up, sits on blankets and have a picnic on the sand. The band is pretty much irrelevant to our needs, though if English Beat plays, it is special. Many locals have heard Dave Wakeling play at house parties in Hermosa Beach.

The Summer Concert Series are 3-4 weeks of music on the sand, usually for the month of August, starting at 6:30 p.m., and lasting until sunset. They take place just south of the Pier and have been going on for years. They bring out about a thousand locals for a late afternoon picnic on the sand. People bring food to share and it’s a good time – great time, actually – to catch up on people you’ve not seen since, well, last week.

Or perhaps longer, because it seems everyone I’ve ever known from Hermosa, Manhattan or Redondo Beach and still lives in the area shows up at least once during the summer. It’s cool, it’s casual and it’s conversational.

The concerts conclude at about 7:30 after which, of course, we then hit the bars on Pier Ave.