Posts by Mark McDermott
Greenberg appointed to the MBUSD school board
by Mark McDermott Bruce Greenberg was appointed to the Manhattan Beach Unified School District at a special meeting Wednesday afternoon. Greenberg will fill the vacancy left by Jason Boxer, who resigned in January. The board chose an appointment process over a special election due to its cost, which the LA County Registrar estimated at $879,000.…
Read MoreManhattan Beach Mayor Stern launches Kindness Initiative
by Mark McDermott On the morning of May 22, 2020, Maureen McBride opened up her boutique in downtown Manhattan Beach, Tabula Rasa Essentials, for the first time in ten weeks. Those ten weeks had been rough. McBride had endured many sleepless nights. The world had been turned upside down. The pandemic had launched its ravaging…
Read MoreThe invisible rope
by Mark McDermott and Ryan McDonald A rope went up on the beach below Bruce’s Lodge on June 23, 1912, the very first Sunday the resort that welcomed Black beachgoers to Manhattan Beach was in operation. Though the man responsible for roping off of the beach was one of the city’s founders, George…
Read MoreGovernor Newsom signs Bruce’s Beach bill into law
by Mark McDermott and Gavin Heaney Video by Jefferson Graham, Photos by Kevin Cody Governor Gavin Newsom came to Manhattan Beach Thursday morning and signed S.B. 796 into law, paving the way for Los Angeles County to return beachfront land which was historically Bruce’s Beach to the descendants of the family who lost the…
Read MoreLet it out: Coming together and letting go at BeachLife Festival
by Mark McDermott and Rachel Reeves By the time the Marleys stepped onto the Hightide stage at BeachLife Festival Sunday night, 51 bands had performed several hundred songs from morning til night over the previous three days. They sang of love and sex and drugs and beauty galore, of hellhounds, oceans, and midnight jokers, of…
Read MoreNew Power Trio: Lamkin, Stroman honored for business advocacy in pandemic, Villareal heads North MB
by Mark McDermott Nobody had any plan for this. Almost exactly 18 months ago, nearly every business in Manhattan Beach was shut down. Kelly Stroman, the president and CEO of the MB Chamber of Commerce, remembers sitting down with her one full time employee, Carolina Dorado, and addressing a single simple question: what do we…
Read MoreManhattan Beach Unified prepares for a full reopening of schools
Back to school never felt quite like this before. Parents with kids attending Manhattan Beach Unified School District have received a flurry of messages from the district in the last week, both full of anticipation and long outlines of what will be required as the district prepares for its day of school next Wednesday. On…
Read MoreManhattan Beach receives $8.4 million in American Rescue Plan funds
by Mark McDermott The Manhattan Beach City Council on August 3 accepted an allocation of $8.4 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, and then quickly put $2 million of it to use — paying down the debt for the new $9.7 million Fire Station No. 2, a move that will save the City $1…
Read MoreManhattan Beach considers using Redondo Beach’s homeless court
by Mark McDermott The Manhattan Beach City Council continues to grapple with a conundrum as it tries to address the city’s homeless population. The council has been interested in Redondo Beach’s innovative “homeless court” program, which. since it’s implementation late last year. has worked with 50 people among its homeless population of 176, and…
Read MoreBeach Cities surge in COVID-19 cases among unvaccinated continues
by Mark McDermott The Beach Cities, despite their relatively high vaccination rates, are experiencing a surge of COVID-19 infections, resulting from the combination of the extremely contagious Delta variant and lingering unvaccinated populations. The last week saw increases in new COVID-19 cases in Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach that brought each city…
Read MoreBUDGET 2021-22: City emerges from pandemic with strong finances
by Mark McDermott Perhaps no event rang truer to recently retired City Controller Henry Mitzner’s most famed City Hall axiom than the adopted 2021-22 fiscal year budget, which projects the City of Manhattan Beach emerging from an economically devastating time with its economic health somehow better than ever. “When it’s bad out there, it’s good…
Read MoreJuneteenth has special resonance at Bruce’s Beach
by Nadia Bidarian and Mark McDermott A Bob Marley medley performance, a drum circle led by percussionist Curtis Byrd, speeches by Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn and State Senator Steven Bradford, and three food trucks were among the highlights of the Juneteenth celebration at Bruce’s Beach Park on Saturday. Though Juneteenth celebrates the freeing…
Read MoreManhattan Beach History Advisory Board’s report on Bruce’s Beach approved
by Mark McDermott No definitive history exists of what occurred a century ago at Bruce’s Beach, specifically regarding the City of Manhattan Beach’s racially motivated dispossession of oceanfront land, owned by Willa and Charles Bruce and six other African American families. But the City Council on Tuesday night accepted a report on those events compiled…
Read MoreWhat happened at Bruce’s Beach
Charles and Willa Bruce made a stand that continues to reverberate a century later by Mark McDermott Second of three parts On June 17, 1912, Willa and Charles Bruce opened Bruce’s Beach resort. It was a modest operation located on a sparsely populated stretch of beach in an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County.…
Read MoreMichael Lang named chief of the Manhattan Beach Fire Department
The City of Manhattan Beach Thursday morning announced the appointment of Michael Lang as its new fire chief. “I am humbled and honored to be trusted with the responsibility of leading the Manhattan Beach Fire Department,” said Chief Lang. “I am grateful for the support of the City Manager and City Council and their confidence…
Read MoreNew Scout House will help bring generations together in Manhattan Beach
Social isolation went mainstream during the pandemic, when normally hypersocial young children and teens joined the oldest among us in the house-bound doldrums. Such isolation, as we now all know, has a cost. Several studies have found that social isolation increases a person’s risk of premature death from all causes, bringing risk levels normally associated…
Read More