A short slope of white and pastel storefronts runs down to a 1920s concrete pier, with numbered walk streets closed to traffic on either side.
What Downtown Manhattan Beach looks like
Manhattan Beach Boulevard runs straight downhill from Highland Avenue to the pier, with Manhattan Avenue crossing it a block up from the sand. Storefronts along both streets stay one and two storeys, in white and pastel stucco, with matching awnings repeating from block to block. A few fronts on Manhattan Avenue have been rebuilt in glass and steel, set between the older stucco buildings.
Numbered walk streets drop off the boulevard on both sides, running straight down to the Strand with no vehicle access at all. Short flights of concrete steps and small front gardens line them, and a bicycle or a pedestrian is the only traffic a camera has to work around.
sits on Morningside Drive, a block east of Manhattan Avenue. Built in the early 1990s, its buildings step back from the street around a paved courtyard with underground parking below, a different scale from the two storey storefronts closer to the water.
The pier at the bottom of the hill is poured concrete with a rounded end, built in 1920 and restored to its original look in the early 1990s. Its octagonal building, added in 1922 and rebuilt in that same renovation, has a Spanish tile roof over what is now the . Wood decking runs the length of the walkway, with a concrete rail on either side facing straight out to the water.
Shot in Downtown Manhattan Beach
The pier at the bottom of the hill has drawn productions back to the same structure for decades. Every scene below uses the real concrete pier rather than a copy of it.
Manhattan Beach Pier
The same concrete structure, built in 1920, has stood in front of the camera on its own terms in every one of these.
Point Break, 1991
Keanu Reeves' character buys a surfboard from a shop on the pier itself. The scene uses the pier's own wood decking and railings rather than a studio set built to match it. Street View
Starsky & Hutch, 2004
Starsky stretches on the sand underneath the pier, among its concrete pilings. The same pilings are visible from the beach on either side of the structure. Street View
A Star Is Born, 1937
The closing scenes were filmed on the sand beside the pier. The beach here runs flat and open right up to the pier's concrete columns. Street View
Indictment: The McMartin Trial, 1995
The end of the pier
The closing scene was filmed on the pier, near the octagonal building at its end. The ocean fills the frame on three sides from this far out. Street View
What Downtown Manhattan Beach can double for
Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach, California
Hermosa Beach's Pier Avenue is the same flat commercial run down to a concrete pier, in low stucco storefronts and the same coastal light. The two towns sit three miles apart, so a crew already scouting one can often work the other on the same day. Hermosa's pier is shorter and squared off rather than rounded, so a frame that includes the pier's own end gives the difference away. Try searching flat commercial run to pier now.
Capitola Village in Capitola, California
Capitola Village runs down a short hillside street to its own wooden wharf, the same way Manhattan Beach Boulevard runs down to its pier. Both keep their storefronts to one and two storeys, so a wide shot down the hill reads the same way in either town. Capitola's shopfronts are painted in brighter colors than Manhattan Beach's white and pastel stucco, so the hillside to wharf match holds best in a tighter frame that keeps the color out of shot. Try searching hillside to wharf now.
La Jolla Village in San Diego, California
La Jolla Village is another small commercial grid that steps down toward the water in low white and pastel buildings, close enough in tone for a wide establishing shot to pass for the same kind of town. Girard Avenue has the closest scale, with storefronts of one and two storeys similar to Manhattan Beach Boulevard's. La Jolla's coastline is rocky bluffs rather than open sand, so the comparison works only in shots that stay on the street and leave the shoreline out of frame. Try searching white storefronts down to water now.
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