Original, Hermosa Beach El Gringo overtaken by rising rents
by Mark McDermott Something about the building always sparked Bill Graw´s imagination. He lived a few blocks away, up by Valley Park, and often walked down the hill to have a burrito at El Gringo and then a drink across the street at Critters. He’d station himself at a window seat and stare back at El Gringo, a weird but cool building that rises improbably from the curve of a hill on Hermosa Avenue, like some stranded ship. “Man,” he’d say to whomever he was having a drink. “I’d like to buy that restaurant someday.” This was during the mid-1990s. Graw was in his 20s. He had grown up locally, attended USC and obtained a business degree, then returned to the Beach Cities, where he was working his way through graduate school at Pepperdine, pursuing a master’s degree in psychology. But he already knew what he wanted to do. “I studied psych because of my experience in the service industry,” Graw said. “People and their behaviors interested me.” Graw had always loved to work. His first job, as a teenager, was at Ardella’s Pizzeria at Manhattan Village mall. But it was his next job, at Penguin’s Yogurt on Upper Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach that made him realize what kind of work he loved…
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