Mourning Glory: Rick Hankus built a community around Java Man, Ocean Diner

by Kevin Cody

Hermosans who want to impress out-of-town guests and business clients probably won’t take them to one of the town’s many upscale restaurants.

They’re more likely to take them to Java Man for coffee and a morning glory muffin, knowing when they walk in the door, Nick, or Chuy, or Daniel will greet them by name. And if they take a table outside, regulars at the other tables will ask what they’ve been up to. If they want privacy, they’ll sit inside, where the little, red, 1929 beach cottage is broken up into small, semi private rooms.

There was a Starbucks down the street from Java Man, and two Starbucks up the street. All three recently closed. In a town where wealthy newcomers dress down to fit in, Java Man has more cachet.

Hankus opened Java Man in 1992, the same year Seattle’s Starbucks went public with its minimalist, cookie cutter coffee houses.

Hankus’ vision was a beatnik era coffee house, like Hermosa’s Insomniac in the ‘50s, a place where writers wrote, musicians performed, and artists exhibited their paintings. But he wasn’t stuck in the past. With the advent of wifi in 2000, Java Man became a shared work space. Shared work space chains have since bloomed and burst, but Java Man still offers wifi, a chair and a table for the price of coffee and a muffin.

Starbuck’s openings and closings didn’t impact Java Man, Hankus said, because his customers were “baked in” to the community. 

Over the past three decades, though, Hankus did have to weather recessions, rent increases, oscillating coffee prices and a pandemic. 

His most difficult year, he said, was 2010, when the city eliminated street parking on Pier Avenue  during the redesign of upper Pier Avenue, where Java Man is located. The work was supposed to take a few months. It took nearly a year.

But in the long term, Hankus acknowledged, the work benefited Java Man because the redesign included a new parkette where his customers could drink coffee in the sunshine.

Hankus was hoping for a similar reversal of fortune when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in June. He never smoked, though a joke among restaurant owners is their number one cause of death is owning a restaurant. The chemotherapy worked, shrinking the tumor in his lung by 50 percent. The surgery he underwent two Sundays ago to remove what remained of the tumor was also successful. 

“We thought we were in the clear,” said Tim Biggs, his husband of 27 years. But on the third day of recuperating at home, Hankus had trouble breathing. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. He was 67.

As word of Hankus’ passing spread, even many longtime Java Man customers were surprised to learn the nicely dressed, soft spoken older man who delivered trays of morning glory muffins, and other baked goods, and who occasionally worked behind the cash register, randomly refusing payments, owned Java Man.

Customers who knew Hankus was the owner were often members of service groups like the Hermosa Woman’s and Sister City clubs, Kiwanis, and Rotary who knew Hankus as a soft touch when they needed coffee and baked goods for a fundraiser. For over a dozen years, he ran the kitchen for the annual Mama Liz Thanksgiving Dinner, at the Hermosa Kiwanis Club. Each year, fellow volunteers served 400 to 600 community people turkey dinners and pumpkin pie.

Java Man is a perennial winner of the Easy Reader Best of the Beach coffee shop balloting. But he regularly declined to be photographed for the honor, preferring to direct credit to his crew.

One of the few times he agreed to be publicly recognized was in 2002, when he was named Man of the Year by the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce for his work with Big Brothers and AIDS support groups. 

“I thought it was a mistake when the Chamber called me,” he said during his brief acceptance speech.

Hankus moved to Hermosa Beach in 1979, after growing up in Chicago and graduating from Valparaiso University in Indiana with a degree in journalism.

“During a visit to relatives in Palos Verdes, he was sitting in their hot tub drinking a gin and tonic, and thought, ‘I could live here,’” Biggs recalled this week. 

Hankus started working in restaurants. In 1986, a friend backed him in the purchase of Granny’s Diner, on Aviation Boulevard in Hermosa Beach. He changed the name to Ocean Diner, but kept on Chef Emigdio Nunez, who is still Ocean Diner’s chef.

“Rick loved big bands and Broadway musicals. So he piped in 40s music and decorated the restaurant with framed World War II front pages and old toasters and waffle irons,” Biggs said.

“When customers said how much they loved the ‘50s theme, he’d always correct them,” Biggs said. “It’s the 40s,” the era of Benny Goodman and the Andrews sisters, not Elvis. 

Ocean Diner’s motto is, “Just like eating at mom’s… only better.” Its menu features familiar, midwestern comfort food, including biscuits and gravy breakfasts, meatloaf dinners, and Boston cream pie, as well a few nods to contemporary cuisine, such as stir fried tofu, and oatmeal creme brulee with caramelized brown sugar. 

In the early years, Hankus was the baker and dishwasher. 

Biggs worked in the entertainment industry and lived up the street from Ocean Diner. One year during an “industry hiatus,”  he said, he spent a lot of time drinking Ocean Diner coffee, which was not the typical diner’s Folgers drip coffee. It was a freshly roasted blend of Kenya, Sumatra and Columbian beans.

“High octane is our middle name,” the Ocean Diner menu said.

Hankus and Biggs adopted their daughter Ella in 2004, and son Ian in 2006. They married in 2013, the year same sex marriage was legalized in California.

Following Hankus’ passing last Wednesday, Biggs said he and the kids contemplated closing Java Man and Ocean Diner for a few days to allow time for grieving. Not just for the Hankus-Biggs family, but also for the three dozen siblings, cousins and in-laws who make up the Java Man-Ocean Diner family. 

“Thursday morning at 6 a.m. everyone was back at work. It’s how Rick would have wanted us to honor him,” Biggs said.

Biggs filled in for Rick, picking up trays of muffins at Ocean Diner, and milk at Vons and delivering them to Java Man. 

“My sister, who came along to help said, ‘This is crazy. Why not use a delivery service?’ I told her this is what Rick did. It kept him in touch.”

Rick Hankus is survived by his husband Tim Biggs, children Ella and Ian, brother David Hankus and many cousins. A celebration of his life will be held early next year. ER