Redondo Fun Factory owner retains leasehold in middle of waterfront development
Redondo Fun Factory owner Steve Shoemaker. Photo When customers at the Sea Inn bar on the Redondo Beach pier complained about being cold, owner Steve Shoemaker would hand them a coat from a rack at the front door. The bar had no heat because the bar’s barn door slid open 50 feet and the fire department required the door be open during business hours. “To heat the bar, I’d have had to heat the whole harbor,” Shoemaker said. That was 1972, when the City of Redondo leased Shoemaker 30,000 square feet on the lower level of the pier’s three story parking garage. His lease was $1 per square foot — per year. “I was the only bidder,” Shoemaker said. In 1974, Shoemaker converted his bar into a video game arcade after discovering the bar’s 25 cent video games were more profitable than its 25 cent beers. He called it The Czu (pronounced Zoo), after Redondo’s then mayor Bill Czuleger. Today, many of the more than 300 games at the arcade, including Skeeball, are still 25 cents. The popular Tilt-A-Whirl is $2 on sunny days and 50 cents on rainy days. The coat rack by the door is gone, the arcade is still unheated and the fire department still requires the doors be kept open. But it’s rare…
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