by Kevin Cody
During his introduction of Allen Sanford as the 2023 Mayor’s Person of the Year, Redondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand recalled the day in 2017 when Sanford pitched him an idea for breathing new vitality into the slumbering Redondo waterfront.
Sanford wanted to drain Seaside Lagoon, and build a temporary stage there.
He envisioned a Coachella-quality music festival, with stars such as Willie Nelson.
“How can we stay out of your way,” Brand recalled blurting out on hearing Sanford’s idea.
The first BeachLife Music Festival was held, two years later. Willie Nelson was the Friday night headliner. Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys, closed Sunday.
The festival received national acclaim, including a reverential review in Rolling Stone.
After going dark in 2020 for COVID, BeachLife returned to even greater acclaim, with a line-up that included Jane’s Addiction, Counting Crows and the Marley Brothers.
In 2022, the headliners included The Steve Miller Band and Sheryl Crow. This past May Black Crows, John Fogerty and Mavis Staples performed.
Brand recalled Sanford asking him at the last show if he wanted to meet any of the performers.
“I’m the mayor, right. So I get to meet anyone I want. I told him Mavis Staples. I grew up listening to the Staples Sisters,” Brand said.
Last September, Sanford doubled down on Redondo with a country and Americana festival he called BeachLife Ranch, headlined by Old Crow Medicine Show and Hall and Oates. This September’s BeachLife Ranch will bring Jack Johnson, The Doobie Brothers and Wynonna Judd to the awakening waterfront.
Sanford predicts BeachLife Ranch will surpass BeachLife in popularity, based on the ardency of the country fans he witnessed at the last September’s festival.
During his acceptance of the Mayor’s Person of the Year Award, Sanford recalled talking to his wife while struggling to come up with a name for the festival. His wife grew up in Germany, watching Baywatch, and dreaming of living the beach life.
“Call it BeachLife,” she told me.
Stanford thanked the mayor for the city’s “all star” staff and described Redondo as having a special heart and soul.
“Culture, not economics, should drive change,” Allen observed in a nod to Brand, who has spent the past decade fending off commercial development in the harbor, in favor of public uses.
Brand devoted the better part of his State of the City remarks to a proposed waterfront education center in King Harbor, described during a council meeting last June as offering a “fully immersive and experiential augmented reality.”
Brand showed his audience a rendering of the futuristic looking center, proposed for the former Joe’s Crab Shack location, facing the Harbor’s main channel. The education center is scheduled for discussion by the council at its July 18 meeting, Brand said.
“It won’t happen overnight, but change is coming to the waterfront,” Brand said. ER
