Three Pier Plaza bar fan clubs officially recognized by NFL teams
by Raymond Dussault
On any given NFL Sunday, Pier Plaza in Hermosa Beach turns into something resembling a walkable football village.
Steelers fans pour into Tower 12. Eagles fans pack American Junkie shoulder-to-shoulder. Bills fans gather at Baja Sharkeez. Rams fans jam Hennessey’s Tavern
The village outposts to the south, on the Redondo Pier, where Bears fans gather at The Slip. And to the north, in El Segundo, where Chargers fans gather at Brewport and Rock & Brews.
On Sundays, fans wearing jerseys from nearly every NFL team drift through the South Bay, quaffing beers and nursing football grievances beneath the towering palms.
During last month’s NFL Draft Weekend, Tower 12 was honored with the sports bar equivalent of a Michelin Star when it was invited to be a part of the Steelers Nation Unite bar in Pittsburgh. Steelers Nation Unite was created for Draft Weekend to recognize just 12 Steeler Nation bars, representing cities from around the world, including New York, Rome, Dublin, Guadalajara, and Heidelberg.And there, among the Steelers global outposts was Hermosa Beach.
Not Los Angeles.
Not Hollywood.
Hermosa Beach.
A one-square-mile surf town better known for volleyball, dive bars and flip-flops than NFL culture.
Or at least it used to be.
In an era when NFL franchises spend millions trying to manufacture authentic fan engagement, it may be unprecedented that a one-square-mile California beach town hosts three officially recognized fan clubs — the Steelers, Eagles, and Bills.
In Hermosa Beach, one game ends, another begins, fans come together, friends are made and cheers erupt with every touchdown.
“It’s casual here,” said Greg Newman, co-owner of Tower 12, and Sharkeez. “People can throw on their hometown jersey and flip-flops and spend the whole day with friends, old and new. Hermosa already has the social energy built in.”
Newman believes the South Bay’s blend of transplants, beach culture and walkability create the perfect environment for NFL fandom to flourish.
“If you go inland, maybe there’s one sports bar for your team,” he said. “But there’s nowhere to go afterward. Here, it’s an experience.”
That experience has intensified since the arrival of SoFi Stadium, home of the Rams and the Chargers. SoFi Stadium didn’t create the South Bay’s football culture so much as amplify and concentrate it.
El Segundo became home to the Chargers’ The Bolt, the team’s state-of-the-art training facility and headquarters. Manhattan Beach’s Westdrift hotel emerged as a discreet but increasingly recognized hospitality hub for visiting fans, teams and league personnel.
And football culture, once scattered across isolated sports bars, suddenly found itself with beaches, walkable nightlife, and two NFL teams nearby.
The rise of the fan clubs
The NFL South Bay fan culture began evolving into something surprisingly organized long before Tower 12’s Steelers Draft Weekend recognition,
The South Bay Eagles Alliance may be the earliest example.
Twin brothers Kieran and Kirk Harrington moved from Philadelphia to the South Bay in the early 2000s and began gathering Eagles fans at their Manhattan Beach wine bar, Corkscrew. When the Harringtons took over Chelsea’s (now Fox and Farrow) in Hermosa Beach, their South Bay Eagles Alliance moved with them. When it outgrew Chelsea’s it moved to American Junkie, where more than 200 Eagles fans now gather on Sundays.
Green Jell-O shots are passed around after touchdowns. Chants echo through the open-air bar. Fans drive in from Santa Monica, Orange County and throughout Los Angeles.
“It became more than football,” Harrington said. “It became a community.”
Last year, the South Bay Eagles Alliance raised $25,000 for the Eagles Autism Challenge through raffles, auctions and donations.
South Bay LA Bills Backers was founded by Daniel Godwin when just a few Buffalo transplants gathered to watch games at Baja Shakeez.
“Bills fans recognize each other,” Godwin said. “You see somebody in a jersey and you yell, ‘Let’s Go Bills.’ That’s how it started.”
The group became an officially recognized Bills Backers club and now hosts large game-day gatherings in Hermosa. During the Bills vs Rams opener in 2022, the organization helped host a massive fan weekend that drew more than 1,000 Bills fans.
Godwin estimates the event poured $100,000 into the Hermosa economic.
“It’s become this destination,” he said. “People want football, but they also want sunshine, bars, the beach and community.”
The Steelers group evolved similarly, though in a more wandering fashion.
When I moved to Hermosa Beach in 2009, the Steelers community revolved around the McCulgan brothers’ Shark’s Cove on Hermosa Avenue. At halftime, fans would march across the Street to the Plaza singing “Here We Go Steelers,” before taking celebratory shots at the rival Patriots bar, Fat Face Fenners Fish Shack (now Tower 12).
The tradition somehow survived multiple bar closures, fractured fan migrations and years of instability.
Today, Steelers fans still perform the halftime march, now to neighboring Patrick Molloy’s, ending with a communal shot of Jägermeister.
It’s ridiculous and wonderful. And somehow it survived everything.
The scattered Steelers fan base was rebuilt into South Bay Steelers Nation, which organizes events and works direclty with the Pittsburgh Steelers organization.
When the Steelers played the Rams in 2023, Hermosa Beach hosted the franchise’s first major post-COVID Road Warriors event — the Steelers’ official traveling fan celebration program.
The result was chaos in the best possible way.
More than 1,500 Steelers fans descended on Pier Plaza. Steelers Nation Radio broadcast live from Tower 12. Former players posed for photos. Steelers flags flew everywhere and Steelers mascot, Steely McBeam delighted youth on the Plaza
“It felt like Hermosa became a Steelers’ town for a day,” Newman said.
The event raised $3,000 for a local breast cancer nonprofit.
The Steelers organization in Pittsburgh recognized Hermosa Beach wasn’t simply a random sports bar scene. It was one of the most active and visually distinctive Steelers communities outside of Pennsylvania.
Which is how Tower 12 became one of the 12 Steelers bars recognized worldwide throughout the 2026 Draft Weekend.
There’s a strange irony to all of this.
Football — America’s cold-weather, rust-belt, parking-lot-tailgate sport — has taken root in one of the most laid-back surf communities in California.
But perhaps that contradiction is exactly why it works.
The South Bay attracts transplants from everywhere. Young professionals. Midwesterners. East Coasters. Military veterans. Former college athletes. Current and former NFL players and coaches. People who arrived for the weather and stayed for the lifestyle.
Football is the connective tissue.
And now, the infrastructure around the NFL is increasingly surrounding the South Bay itself.
The Chargers’ new headquarters in El Segundo sits just minutes from the beach.
“You could almost throw something from the rooftop of Westdrift and hit The Bolt,” said Luann Uszler, the hotel’s director of group sales.
Lifelong Chargers fan Patrick Conlon, known locally as “The Boltender,” helped organize the Chargers’ draft celebration in El Segundo this year, drawing hundreds of fans.
“When the Chargers moved north from San Diego, they had an identity crisis,” Conlon said. “El Segundo is their base now. It makes sense to build that culture here.”
Maybe that’s the larger story unfolding quietly along the South Bay coastline.
Not just fandom.
Identity.
The South Bay has become neutral ground for transplanted loyalties, hometown traditions and entirely new communities.
On Sundays, Pier Plaza doesn’t belong to one franchise.
It belongs to everybody.
And somehow, that makes it feel more like football than football cities themselves.
Back in Pittsburgh, as the draft crowd flowed through Steelers Country beneath massive video boards and championship banners, fans from Hermosa Beach gathered beneath the Tower 12 display for photos.
For a few surreal moments, a little beach bar beside the Pacific Ocean stood shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the Steelers’ most iconic fan destinations around the world.
2,146 miles from home.
And somehow right where it belonged. ER
