Beer! Music! More beer! Brew Lagoon returns to Seaside Lagoon

Something’s brewing in South Redondo
Gasser’s Mike Bouchard on this year’s Brew Lagoon: 5 bands and over 20 breweries

The rendezvous took place in a generic shopping center, but as soon as I climbed into the car the person next to me brought out a greasy mechanic’s rag and said, “I’m sorry, padre, but you’ll need to be blindfolded.”
Well, being blindfolded and driven to a secret location isn’t my idea of a good time. That’s how people disappear, you know, but it was too late; I had no choice.
After about an hour, the vehicle came to a stop. A quiet street. I was helped out and escorted across a field. A heavy gate was opened and closed behind us as we entered a secluded patio. The blindfold was removed. The lighting was subdued but in front of me I could make out the well-stocked bar, bottles rising in tiers. Exotic and expensive brands only. The phonograph was playing what sounded like Polynesian music, circa 1945-1950. The bamboo-lined walls were decorated with skulls, tiki gods, a harpoon, a shirt that had belonged to the painter Gauguin, and other assorted South Pacific bric-a-brac.
There were seven or eight bar stools, only one of which was occupied. The man sitting there turned around to greet me. It was Mike Bouchard, who used to run Gasser Lounge in Redondo Beach. Gasser, you may recall, was one of the most popular watering holes in the South Bay. Bouchard and I had agreed to meet to talk about Brew Lagoon, the craft beer and music festival that takes place on Saturday, April 28, at the Seaside Lagoon in Redondo Beach.
“Where are we?” I asked.
He pointed to a sign behind the bar: The Hoodoo Hut.
“I mean, what city? Gardena? Lomita?”
The bartender came over, placed his hand on what I took to be a scimitar and said, “Somewhere in Redondo Beach.”
“Meet Josh,” Bouchard said. The Hoodoo Hut, it soon transpired, is an exclusive, members-only “speakeasy”-type establishment. Officially, of course, it doesn’t exist.

From lounge to lagoon
By way of making small talk while I warily eyed my surroundings, I asked Bouchard about Gasser and what he’d been up to since then.
“It’s been about a year and a half since we closed,” he said. “Kind of alongside Gasser for several years we were doing events. Our events were growing, and they were outgrowing Gasser and becoming their own entity. So when we closed the doors at Gasser I just put all my energy into the events.”
Originally, these had included various tastings hosted by sales reps from different beer or liquor companies. Special gatherings, in other words, with limited attendance.

“That was the impetus for Brew Lagoon,” Bouchard continues, and it’s when Dave Tardif, a longtime sales rep for one of the craft beer companies, came into the picture. The two men had known each other for about eight years and teamed up to promote more events.. But what kind of events? At first, they weren’t sure.
“So we started brainstorming,” Bouchard says, “trying to come up with concepts, and we approached the city (of Redondo Beach) about doing something down in South Redondo.”
In the end, it was the tiki-style of the Hoodoo Hut that inspired them. They realized that they wouldn’t be able to serve tropical cocktails, at least not early on, but I’m guessing that a beer event immediately struck them as doable, and of course there had to be live entertainment. Tapped into South Bay culture, they had enough contacts for both.

“That begat a four- or five-month process of jumping through hoops and getting told ‘No’ every step of the way,” Bouchard says, referring to the inaugural Brew Lagoon Fest, held last year. “Every time we turned around it was a new form and a new department we had to talk to. The city is very trepidatious when it comes to anything that involves any kind of liability on their part.”
Although Gasser was a known quantity, the people behind it were not. City bureaucrats asked to see the proposed lineup of who might be playing at the event. “I sent them the list of the bands and links to all the bands,” Bouchard says, “and all of a sudden everybody was onboard.”
The groups were local and apparently well-liked.
That was last year, and this year the lineup is similar, but slightly different.

Bouchard praises each band and pinpoints its assets. So we’ll have Fartbarf, Kira Lingman and her group, Free Stone, and Lost Beach. I’m mentioning the Royal Rats last because they’re going to be set up on the side and will play between acts, taking the place of a deejay so to speak, and ensuring that the music never really stops.
While we’d been talking, Josh had been concocting drinks, and he set down two elaborate ceramic tiki goblets, one in front of me and one in front of Bouchard. I took a sip. Perfect. If only all interviews were accompanied by such alcoholic delights.

“Something for the rest of us”
Last year’s Brew Lagoon Fest had quickly sold out, and Bouchard began to explain why.
“The city restricted our attendance. They wanted to see that we could run a safe and responsible event. We turned away 320 people at the gate, and that’s not even counting how many people I turned away by email, and people who just didn’t show up because they heard it was sold out.”
And this year?
“We’ve been allowed to triple our capacity. So it’s going to be a much bigger party, it’s going to be a lot more people and a few additional breweries.

“Crackin’ a beer on the beach, getting your feet in the sand… A beer-based event on the beach is just fun, no matter who you are,” Bouchard continues, waxing poetic. “As far as I’m concerned South Redondo is the greatest place in the universe.”
He also sees the potential in Brew Lagoon, now and in years to come.
“We want to continue to expand because we love the area, and we don’t want this to just turn out to be some big blown-out corporate-style music festival. We want to keep it locally focused. There’s a ton of people in the area that would really dig this. We’d like to get it to the size of the Lobster Fest. But just a little bit more of an experience, more focused on music and beer and culture.”
The Lobster Festival spans an entire weekend. So are you thinking along those lines?
“I would love to see Brew Lagoon go to two days,” Bouchard replies. “I’d like to get some additional bands in, some larger acts. There are beer festivals that do two sessions; you get your day session and then for the night owls like you the (second) session could start at five and go until nine or ten.”

However, there are residential beehives that sit just above King Harbor and its many amusements.
“That area is a little tough (for staging events) when it starts getting late at night because of all those apartments,” Bouchard acknowledges. “We’re just trying to tread the line of what we can do, how to do this without pissing off the old people in the apartments who complain about everything.”
High density, crowds, limited or restricted parking, these are unavoidable obstacles, but Bouchard feels that essentially the Seaside Lagoon is “an incredible space” that’s underutilized. He says that at his event last year many people told him they’d never been there, or hadn’t been there in years, because of its reputation as a place only for kids or families. “You got this amazing space, so let’s do something that’s geared towards adults.”
And what has been the fall-back alternative all these years?
Fiesta Hermosa, Bouchard says, dismissing it with a wave of his hand.
“They hire nothing but cover bands and tribute bands, and it blows. There are cool, interesting, artistic people all over the South Bay, and when the flagship event of frickin’ Hermosa is as generic as a street fair with white-tented folk art, goddam flowery cover bands and tribute bands…”
He laughs, knowing he’s gone off-track, but driving home his point that city-sponsored festivals are generally geared towards the bland and inoffensive, which may be fine for some people but, Bouchard adds, “there’s got to be something for the rest of us who live here.”

Scouting report
And if not in one of the three “Beach” cities, then right next door. Bouchard mentions that there’s been dialogue with the City of El Segundo to hold an event at the Lakes at El Segundo, a municipal golf course that is across from the Chevron plant and encircled by West Basin Municipal Water and Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems rather than by homes. Surroundings, in other words, where the party can get a bit louder and go on a little longer.

Josh has meanwhile handed us a new drink to sample after asking if we preferred it made with gin or mescal. That’s what I like, a bartender who runs the show but takes suggestions. We raise our glasses and this round is dedicated to the late Phil Weisgerber, a mutual friend who often talked about getting together at Gasser or even at his home in Redondo, before that window of opportunity closed abruptly and too soon.
Among the South Pacific and tropical island bric-a-brac mentioned earlier that decorate the Hoodoo Hut are old fishing nets and globules that glow in the ambient light that rings the bar. Josh points to one large orb with evident pride, as apparently it’s a Japanese glass float that’s been bobbing in the Pacific since World War II, recently spotted from afar by a friend who then fetched it from the ocean. The man had other plans for the treasure, but Josh didn’t mince words: “That thing needs to come to the tiki bar.”
Hours later the night’s extraordinary adventure came to an end, my head dulled with spirits but my notebook full of information about Brew Lagoon and Mike Bouchard’s plans for it now and his hopes for it later. We shook hands, I bid farewell to Josh, and then someone stepped up from behind and slipped the blindfold over my eyes. “Let’s get a move-on, padre.” The Hoodoo Hut: Like an oasis, it exists… somewhere in Redondo.
Brew Lagoon takes place from 2 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 28, at the Seaside Lagoon, 200 Portofino Way, Redondo Beach. Five bands and over 20 craft breweries; unlimited tastings. Food supplied by HopSaint and Hudson House. Tickets, $50 now and $60 at the gate. Rain or shine, no refunds. Presented by Gasser Lounge, Huck Street Productions, and Merit Real Estate, Inc. Go to @brewlagoonfest or brewlagoonfest.com. ER