Success Of Inaugural BeachLife Festival Gives Redondo Beach A Signature Event

Spectacular Multi-Day Music Happening A Highlight For The Entire LA South Bay

By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com South Bay Blogger

Like every restaurant, bar or business, cities need a signature item on which they are readily recognized by the rest of the world.

It could be a landmark like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, some local claim such as the “Lobster Capital of the World,” (Rockford, ME) or “a girl, my lord in a flatbed Ford” (Winslow, AZ).

Up until now Redondo Beach, a seaside community in Los Angeles, did not have anything particularly distinguishing on which it could hang its hat. Sure, it could claim to have one of the West Coast’s largest 10Ks, the Super Bowl 10K, and its classic Old Tony’s has a signature cocktail in the Fire Chief. 

But those are things only locals know.

Now, however, it has a signature event that others from outside of the area can recognize, and it is the BeachLife Festival.

After just one year, this spectacular event showcased Redondo like nothing before it. A stage on the sand, acts like Ziggy Marley and Willie Nelson and a well-behaved “South Bay crowd” that presented zero problems for organizers and city officials made BeachLife an instant event in which Redondo can be recognized for years to come.

It was a spectacular success, surely well beyond even visionary Allen Sanford’s wildest dreams. The fact it was so well organized and the crowd cooperated by simply enjoying the event and not doing anything stupid likely pleasantly surprised a lot of city officials and pre-festival critics.

I could not count the number of times I heard friends and others in the crowd say these exact dozen words: “the South Bay has needed something like this for a long time.”

As a result, city officials are likely to green light the festival for future years, perhaps even allowing Sanford to gradually increase its footprint.

The weather certainly helped. It was warm and sunny all three days, making anyone watching on the live stream or on PubClub LIVE, no doubt jealous and wanting to book plane reservations and buy tickets for next year.

Because of all of this, the event overnight became something the city will be known for throughout the South Bay, as well as in Los Angeles and beyond. The city might should even help push it along, like a wave pushes a surfer, and consider creating a new tagline of “Redondo Beach, Home Of The BeachLife Festival.”

By that time, BeachFest could well be known to those outside of the South Bay as Redondo Beach’s signature event.

Related Post:

• BeachLife Festival Exceeds Expectations In First Year