CORRECTION:
In the story “Building BeachLife” (Easy Reader, May 2, 2024), the company that built the BeachLife stages was misidentified. Stage Techs of Santa Fe Springs, Calif., constructed the two main stages, High Tide and Low Tide. Accurate Staging, of Los Angeles, built the festival’s V.I.P. structures and mezzanines.
by Garth Meyer
It began April 16, the fences went up and a four-man signs team wrapped them and placed a giant skateboard at one corner.
At the head of it all is “Ops” team leader Jonny Simms. BeachLife Festival takes two and a half weeks to build and four days to take down.
The staging company is Accurate Staging, their Los Angeles office and warehouse east of Manhattan Beach, one of four close-by contractors who assemble the BeachLife forums and grounds before the fans and music arrive.
Monday, April 22, was the first major day of load-in, with this weekend’s May 3-5 concert 11 days out.
In the parking lot, crews aligned structures to markings of washable spray-paint chalk. In the sand of Seaside Lagoon were flags for more placements. The ground-built “Low Tide” stage would go up first, in the Lagoon, then High Tide, a “trailer stage,” for which its main part is a 52-foot flatbed semi-trailer with hydraulics extending a wing at each side.
The simpler Riptide stage would join them, and this year a fifth stand-alone stage, a lifeguard tower for a D.J., was marked in the sand. Later, a team would build it with metal trusses, then finish it with wood, the feature designed in-house, as for the giant skateboard.
The annual BeachLife Festival is hauled to Redondo Beach on at least 14 semi-trucks, Simms said, a slew of box trucks and personal cars. In one of the latter was Jonny’s mom, Kathy, arriving with catered lunch April 22 for about 20 employees in the boneyard – where Ops keeps forklifts, boom lifts, scissor lifts and carts.
Ballast and trusses
The fundamental pieces used to build BeachLife are 20-inch metal trusses that link together; racks of flat, stage-floor rectangles; and below, 500 to 5,000-lb. concrete and steel “ballast” blocks.
The pieces arrive on nine of the semis. Once unloaded, orchestration begins.
“The ability for hundreds of people to communicate seamlessly, is a marvel,” said BeachLife Co-Founder Allen Sanford. “We have limited time to build. Our communication has to be on point.”
BeachLife stage crews were at Coachella a month ago and their co-horts are building two shows in Las Vegas this week. Once Redondo is done, it’s onto the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas.
“Leapfrogging across the country,” said Jeff Llamas, Accurate Staging sales manager, who lives in Palos Verdes and has been onsite at BeachLife every day inspecting.
Softer installations go in, too. Lt. Corey King, Redondo Beach Police, was inside the fence April 22 setting security cameras, one at the top of the former Ruby’s building.
In the months before the festival, staff members meet biweekly with Redondo Beach Fire Department and Police Department personnel.
“A lot of time the stuff is not fun-looking, until it is fun-looking,” Simms said, a Torrance kid who went to Seattle for college to play music without good-weather distractions, who is now BeachLife’s vice president of operations.
What makes him nervous?
“I’m not nervous, I’m confident,” he said.
What has he learned over the five BeachLife festivals he has worked?
“Proper timing… turf installation, how do we make a turf plan, without affecting everybody else,” Simms said. “It’s really just learning efficiencies.”
Luke Merrell, who lives on a sailboat in King Harbor, is the quartermaster. He started out on the signs crew and now he is part of Simms’ Ops team, managing the backhouse; equipment, radio and machines check-in and check-out.
On Friday night, April 26, winds rose to 30 mph, representing the first time BeachLife has dealt with a weather issue. Aside from a few loosened ties, everything held and it was a non-issue.
Gears
Once a feature is built and inspected, the signs team follows. Their mesh banners of all sizes arrive in three U-Haul loads from a printer in San Diego, stored at the BeachLife offices in the former Gold’s Gym across the street.
The BeachLife operation is managed by 11 people, working year-round, full time. Construction weeks kick the office into another gear, inside and outside.
“Once the fencing signs go up, it’s a billboard on its own,” said Katie Henley, marketing director.
The phones ring more, and Sam Meyers, festival coordinator/ticketing director, estimates 20 percent of ticket sales come in the last two weeks.
On the grounds, the lighting goes up last, in the three days before Friday’s opening.
“A full-bore push, and audio, with an audio test Thursday night,” Simms said.
Then a short pause until the onslaught.
“We built something that people are smiling about,” said Simms, of the feeling when it is all done and ready and crowds start to arrive.
Planning
Last September at BeachLife Ranch, the series debuted a 32-foot “thrust” — a stage extension from High Tide jutting into the crowd. The catwalk has been built again for BeachLife 2024. Other changes for this year include moving the Sidestage restaurant to Low Tide, right at the harbor’s edge for ocean views, and the V.I.P area has doubled in size, extending into the Lagoon.
“They give us their dream, we do the drawings and send it out to a structural engineer,” Llamas said.
All told, about 300 workers build BeachLife, transforming a parking lot and sandlot into something else.
“The most important step is the site marking,” Simms said. “If it’s off by an inch or a foot, we’re toast.”
In the end, 72,000 square feet of breathable, self-cleaning, bladed turf is laid across the asphalt — if a drink spills, it sifts out through holes. The festival owns all of its turf, replacing certain 15 x 100-foot rectangles each event. During the year, the 40 rolls are stored in various places.
“In the nooks and crannies of (L.A. County),” said co-founder Sanford. “In the South Bay, real estate is expensive so we have to look wider. We trade and pay for space.”
“Homegrown and homebuilt”
Supervisors of the building of BeachLife are young and local. Simms is a veteran at 33. Meyer, at 25, from Palos Verdes, is seasoned. Merrell is 23, a home-schooled kid from Torrance who works in ship repair at the Port of Long Beach for his other job.
“No outside production. Even our sound provider, I grew up with,” Sanford said. “To the extent that we have to go outside the South Bay, everything is Los Angeles.”
The first year, to get it started, they hired a separate production company.
“The goal was always to be homegrown and homebuilt,” Sanford said. “It’s been exciting, very rewarding to now see a bunch of young people execute a top-quality event after learning the ropes the last few years.”
When a BeachLife weekend is over, and the tear-down is complete, the work continues for Simms and company for another month in the office to wrap up what was.
“For people outside, I wish I could say how hard everyone works,” Meyers said. “Dozens and dozens of people do a ton of work. It’s like hosting a party – you don’t really care if you have fun, you just want everyone else to.” ER
Clockwise from top left, a crewmember climbs Low Tide April 27; Luke Merrell, BeachLife quartermaster; a worker stacks trusses April 22; Jonny Simms confers with builders of the lifeguard stand D.J. booth; Redondo Beach Police set up a security camera on top of Ruby’s; Christian Rodriguez, Antonio Saldivar and Juan Vargas of the Accurate Staging L.A. crew; a climber prepares the Low Tide stage for lighting; stitching together 72,000 square feet of turf. Photos by Garth Meyer
