Hermosa Beach Visitors: No Drinking Beer On The Beach

No-Alcohol Policy Catches Some Tourists Off Guard

Here’s something important to know for visitors to Hermosa Beach, CA: There’s no drinking on the beach.

Not beer, wine or alcohol. Do it and get caught and you’ll face a fine or, as a group of springtime visitors from Colorado found out one sunny Saturday in May, a very public lecture from the Hermosa Beach Police Department.

The group was lined up against the wall on The Strand just north of the pier. In full view of locals who were enjoying the late afternoon Happy Hour at The Mermaid.

“The police were very nice,” one later told PubClub.com. “Very polite. We just did not know we couldn’t drink beer on the beach.”

That was obvious, as they seemed to be flaunting it, holding up cans of beer, downing them in full view of everyone and celebrating being on a brief vacation. Doing so on a relatively quite part of the beach – farther to the north or south – this might have gone unnoticed, but not at the pier.

Hermosa Beach is hardly exclusive to the no-drinking-in-public policy. There’s only two beaches you which you can legally drink in California,Desconsco Bech on Catalina Island (and there you have to buy your drinks from the bar; be sure and get the Desconsco Destroyer!) and Fiesta Island in San Diego, but only during the two weekends of the OTL.

Now this is not to say people do not drink on the beach, especially in Hermosa. (Any visitor stumbling upon the Ironman on the 4th of July under the watchful eye of the HBPD would certainly assume it’s okay).

But as PubClub advised the Colorado crew, keep it low and in a plastic cup. It’s something PubClub like to call “concealed cocktails.”

Drinking on beaches in Florida, by the way, is legal.

Just sayin’ California.