The party will be over for the Charlie Saikley Six-Man Volleyball Tournament if the city has its way this summer.
The city will implement a slew of measures in an effort to make it nearly impossible for attendees at this year’s tournament to set up camp, blast music and booze all day.
“We need to say the party is over when it comes to alcohol on our beaches,” Mayor Mitch Ward said at a Tuesday City Council meeting.
City officials pointed to alcohol as the root of the ballooning and often unruly crowds that have in recent years come to characterize the city’s treasured event.
“I do think these changes are significant enough that people will come down and they might even say, ‘It’s not the big party it once was and we may just leave altogether and drink some place else,’” said Manhattan Beach Police Chief Rod Uyeda.
Council members agreed that changes will include fencing off the tournament with multiple entry/exit points, and increasing enforcement from 20 to 40 MBPD officers, six to 35 Community Service Officers and 35 to 60 private security staff. Uyeda will notify council in upcoming months whether he feels additional support from outside enforcement agencies, such as the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, will be needed.
To offset the extra $93,306 needed to cover enhanced enforcement, team entry fees will increase from $600 to $1,100 for regular open teams, $1,000 to $2,500 for sponsored open teams and $400 to $500 for masters teams. Fees will secure 12 team spots with $100 extra per additional player.
The city will also begin an aggressive outreach program to notify the public — including promoters who market the event on party websites — that the alcohol ban, unlike in years past, will be strictly enforced.
“I would explain how critical it is to put a big notice that says, ‘The party is over,’” Councilwoman Portia Cohen said. “Alcohol will not be tolerated.”
Teams may be unsponsored or locally sponsored, but sponsorships will be no longer be allowed to come from national companies, such as Red Bull.
Alcoholic beverages and Jell-O products will be prohibited. However players will be allowed to bring sealed water or sports drink containers. Large coolers will not be permitted.
Team members will be required to wear wristbands, and amplified music and bullhorns will be allowed only during the Sunday portion of the event. Tents will be limited to one per team with no closed sides or banners. In lieu of private tent space and coolers, the city will provide a “players only” tent with water.
California Beach Volleyball Association president Chris Brown called many of the changes “Draconian.”
“You’re really threatening to mess with the magic of the tournament, which is what makes it worth saving” Brown said. “You could end up with something that’s so far removed from what the original tournament was that it is not even worth saving.”
Council members did not support recommendations to limit the tournament to players 18 and over, push back the tournament date, reduce the number of teams, move the masters tournament to the north side of the pier or prohibit the wild costumes that started popping up a few years ago.
“It would be sad to take away the costumes from the event,” said Olympic volleyball player Bob Samuels, who has played in the tournament for more than 20 years. “…Moving the masters to the north side of the pier would certainly take away from the elder statesmen monitoring and keeping some of the younger folks in check.”
The Six-Man was first held in 1957 as part of the International Surf Festival, a competition in which lifeguards and community members compete in a variety of water and beach sports. The volleyball tournament was added to keep spectators entertained during the often time-consuming aquatic events. In 1964, Manhattan Beach Recreation Supervisor Charlie Saikley took over the organization of the tournament. When he died in 2005 the tournament was named after him.
Fewer than 1,000 people attended the first year’s event, according to Saikley’s son, Charles Saikley Jr. For the past decade, the tournament’s growth has reached viral proportions, jumping from 2,000 attendees in 1998 to 12,000 attendees in 2002 to 20,000 in 2004, according to the city. Last year, 60,000 attendees crowded the beach during the Saturday portion of the event and spilled into downtown and residential areas. Residents complained of rowdy behavior — including fighting, littering, urinating, defecating and vomiting on public and private properties.
Mayor Pro Tem Richard Montgomery said the volleyball players are not the problem.
“It’s not the guys [playing volleyball] and families who don’t follow the rules,” he said. “It’s the other idiots who show up and give the tournament a bad name.”
At a City Council meeting last month, Chief Uyeda warned that the intoxicated crowd could easily riot, overwhelm police and cost the city thousands in damages.
“When you ring that bell, you can’t un-ring it,” Montgomery said Tuesday. “Our job here is health and safety.”
Volleyball community supporters said that the increased fees would make it difficult for local players to enter.
“The team fees are getting pretty expensive,” said Brent Griebenow, who worked with Saikley organizing the tournament in the ‘90s. “I think teams will pay whatever it takes probably to keep this thing alive, although I don’t think there are a lot of teams who would pay $100 per person. I think that’s an aggressive number for someone to want to be a part of the event.”
“This event cannot lose money for the city,” Councilmember Wayne Powell said. “We have a budget shortfall.”
The city may consider requesting permission from the California Coastal Commission to charge a spectator fee during future tournaments, in order to avoid penalizing players.
Former AVP director Dave Williams said the AVP organization would help the city get the word out about ending the party.
“The Six-Man event is a homecoming for the South Bay, for the volleyball community and Manhattan Beach,” Williams said.
“Whatever you need from the AVP to support this event, you will have it,” he added.
Uyeda said that this year may be too early too tell how effective the new measures will be.
“Although, I anticipate a large crowd this year, I think the crowds that do come might say, ‘Hey, the event has changed a lot. It’s not as fun as it was in years past. Next year we’re not going to go.’”
The City Council also approved several other changes, including the addition of bike parking areas, an increase in portable restrooms, the widening of an emergency aisle, the requirement that each team manager attend a pre-event meeting to discuss the new rules and the placement of food vendors near the courts to alleviate overflow into downtown.
The City expects to gain $202,000 in revenue from team entry fees, which will offset the tournament’s $203,000 cost.
“We’re committed to having this event,” Councilmember Nick Tell said. “I think it’ a great event and the last thing we want to do is kill it. These will be incremental changes made in the right direction.” ER
cops will be pocketing an extra $93,306.
what the heck?
Like I said the first time this came out…
Its all about the cheese.
60,000 people is a myth…
17,000 was the report last year.
And would they stop comparing it from the 1961 6-man event.
first of all southbay population back then was only 40,000
southbay was one big pile of sand till it turn into a yuppie ghetto.
The 6-man can still be a successful and outrageously fun tournament even with the proposed changes….No, Ryan, cops will not be pocketing an extra $93,306. Please re-read the article so you’ll understand where that money will be going. 🙂
8 arrests last year = “the ballooning and often unruly crowds that have in recent years”
@Court1 I agree, In the 8 years or so that I’ve been to 6 Man, attendance has grown but I have no idea where the 60,000 number came from.
Boycott the entire city of Manhattan Beach that weekend.
Show your disapproval by walking with your wallets.
Maybe if Manhattan Beach passed an immigration law like AZ, they could keep out the “unruly crowds” they worry of.
Riots? Really?
I attended Saturday of last year’s event to take photos and watch some friends play. While the crowd was large, there is no way it was 60,000. Maybe 20,000 tops… about enough to fill a large hockey arena. And they were not unruly at all. I’ve seen worse crowds at an NHL Playoff game.
The Mayor Pro Tem states that it’s not the players that are the problem… so why are they being penalized by having to pay more? If it is “the other idiots” that are the problem, why not just staff the entry points with security guards and check their bags like they do at every other event? All it should cost is some guards and a fence. Not $93K!
I suspect that you’ll find that the people who will benefit from the increased fees and enhanced security are the ones who planted the seed with the city…the PD and the Private Security firms. Follow the money and you almost always find the answer.
I’m with Zorro on boycotting MB businesses that weekend. Take public transportation to the event so you don’t feed their parking meters, and when it is over, take your wallet to HB or RB and spend your money there.
This is a simple act of extortion. These bureacratic entities can’t find a way to stay on a budget, so they have to fleece money out of us somehow.
I have been to six-man the last 8 years. There were NOT 60,000 people there last year, it was about 12,000 tops. This is a FUN annual event and if you need to limit the amount of drinking then check bags etc at entry but do not make the players pay for the City letting this get out of hand by turning a blind eye. And what does the music have to do with it? What a joke.
The Police Chief’s rec’s (3 of 5 authors of the Staff Report are police) make sense for him. He wants to hire more buddies for overtime work, and stretching the number of attendees increases the number of officers hired. He secretly wishes there were no Halloween, Super Bowl, or 6-Man because these days make his job more stressful — he fears a riot of volleyball players and fans. If his silly ideas about squishing people through gates, policing music, ticketing all players $80 bucks (by increasing entry fees), and forbidding coolers (which also carry water and gatorade, btw) are passed, he might actually get the riots he’s talking about.
They probably thought the winners of this tourney wins a lot of money…
ITS A CHARITY EVENT!!!
WHY WOULD WE SPEND THAT MUCH MONEY ON A CHARITY EVENT WHEN MOST OF THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES NEEDS THE CHARITY!
How about They donate their time.
Prizes: T-shirts & Medals
Do you get it… Do you get it…
I’m a So Cal expatriate now living is Wisconsin. Even from this distance the city council is clearly fomenting this to create fear and then more fees. Sad day. I hope all VB players hit this hard. Tell mayor Tricky Dick that the sky (ball) is not falling.
I have played in this tournament since 1979. I may reconsider spending my visitor tax money someplace else.
If MB ruins this, there will be a counter tournament somewhere.
I’m an MB native, have never left this city. This’ll be my 17th 6man attendance (played in the tourney twice, myself). It took me several hours to peel my jaw off of the floor when I first read City Council’s proposed changes which, at the time, include costume bans, etc. I was wiping the rust off of my pitchfork to ready it in preparation of protest – it would have been a violation of our first amendment rights. I see now that they came to their senses about that and chose not to band the costumes. But do they have the right to ban coolers? Tents? Isn’t it a public beach? In any event, the more I think through the legality of it, I understand the alcohol ban. After all, public intoxication is not allowed. But what I can’t understand is: why won’t the city fence off the area (or areas away from the courts perhaps) and offer a city-sponsored beer gardens, like in the Hometown Fair? That way, people could drink, the city could make some cash, and the registration fees could be limited, all the while passing some of the burden onto the spectators, and not the players.
But, how foolish of me to think that the city actually really cares about banning alcohol because of “crime”, “fights” and “riots” (have they not seen the hermosa pier on the weekends? 20,000 drunk d-bags there on a year-round basis with minimal fights and no riots.) Instead, the 6man changes come on the heels of the city caving into the pressure of non-native residents who are forcing the closure of our beloved Sand Dune Park, too. This is about non-native rich snobs who have moved into our glorious beach community and turned this into an issue of “Hi, I’m a rich snob and my tax dollars pay your salary, so you better do what i tell you to do or else I’ll vote you out of city council power. And I don’t like fun and awesomeness, I just want to impose my snooty joykill ways on everyone so please, get all of these young people away from my house even though I purchased it knowing full well that I live next to all sorts of things, including bars and a public beach that WILL be frequented by lots of people on a year-round basis.” These snobs are trying to turn our beach community, with it’s unique culture and traditions, into a sea-side Beverly Hills. What next, will they try to impose a ban on the Hometown Fair too???
BOYCOTT the whole dam thing. Don’t go, City will go broke and beg for it to come back.