Pacifica This August: The Pier Is Closed, and the Town Rerouted Around It

On June 5, Liana Lowe cast her line into the surf along Beach Boulevard and called out "Last cast!" the way anglers in her group, West Coast Crabbers, always do before packing up for the day. This time she meant it. A day earlier, city crews had spotted cracking, separation, and displacement in the concrete walkway and abutment of the Pacifica Municipal Pier. By June 5, the city had declared a local emergency. The pier that has served as Pacifica's waterfront anchor since 1973 has been closed ever since, and nobody in town is pretending it's coming back soon.

If you live here, you already know the broad strokes. What's easy to miss, unless you're paying close attention to where people are actually spending their Saturday nights, is that Pacifica's summer didn't pause when the pier went dark. It split. The town's social gravity moved to its two beach clusters, Rockaway Beach to the south and Linda Mar to the north, and each is having a different kind of August because of it.

What actually happened to the pier

The Rev. Herschell Harkins Memorial Pier, the official name for the 1,140-foot L-shaped structure most people just call the Pacifica Pier, was built in part to support the city's now-retired sewer outfall line and has served for decades as Pacifica's most consistent gathering point, a place to fish, crab, watch whales, and grab coffee at Chit Chat Cafe, the small shop that sat at its foot. The city's own public works page had described the pier as "currently considered in good shape" as recently as this year, even while acknowledging its age.

That assessment didn't hold. After the June 4 damage was confirmed, engineers found the separation was severe enough that the city declared the pier unsafe for public use and closed it indefinitely. Within days, construction crews demolished Chit Chat Cafe, whose owners, Ginger Davis and Branden Jenkins, saw a GoFundMe campaign raise nearly $33,000 for their staff and lost income, as of June 18. Residents started a Facebook group called Save Pacifica Pier, trading old photos and pushing for a fast rebuild.

The number that puts the crisis in perspective came later in June, when Pacifica City Manager Sean Charpentier gave the city council a preliminary damage estimate of $64 million, roughly $3 million for emergency stabilization and more than $60 million for the full repair. A 2023 condition report had flagged an estimated $19 million in needed structural work, which means the damage that surfaced this June runs well beyond what anyone had budgeted for. San Mateo County moved later in June to extend its own emergency declaration, a step needed to unlock state or federal funding, but officials say a $50 million federal infrastructure grant the shoreline had once been fast-tracked for is not expected to be available in time to help, which is why the county is pressing the state for aid instead. Nobody in Pacifica has a firm date for when, or in what form, the pier comes back.

Dave Gaufo, another member of West Coast Crabbers, put it simply while talking to a reporter along Beach Boulevard.

"It felt like 'Cheers' for fishermen."

That's the thing about a landmark like this. It wasn't just infrastructure. It was where people crossed paths on a normal Tuesday. With it gone, that crossing point had to happen somewhere else.

Rockaway Beach picked up the slack

South of the pier, Rockaway Beach has quietly become the busier of Pacifica's two beach clusters this summer, and it isn't because anyone planned it that way. The cluster was already anchored by long-running fixtures: Nick's Seafood Restaurant, described on Wikipedia as the oldest restaurant in the Rockaway Beach cluster and a genuine Pacifica landmark, and Moonraker, the seafood restaurant under chef and owner Jason Yeafoli known for its floor-to-ceiling ocean views and its selection of Pacifica-inspired cocktails.

What's changed is the volume around them. Rockaway Beach Brewery reopened last fall next to the shuttered Sea Bowl building, with owner Dan Cronin and brewmaster Rylan Ortiz building a menu around consistency rather than novelty. Roughly ten months later, it's a fixture rather than a novelty, the kind of spot that fills in for a fishing pier when you want a reason to walk down to the water on a weeknight. Nearby, Puerto 27 Peruvian Kitchen & Pisco Bar remains a neighborhood favorite for its ocean-facing patio, and Camelot Fish and Chips, open since 1969, keeps doing what it's done since before most of the neighborhood's newer restaurants existed. None of these businesses opened because the pier closed. But they're the ones absorbing the foot traffic that used to end at Chit Chat Cafe.

Linda Mar is having its own moment

North of Rockaway, Linda Mar Beach isn't picking up pier traffic so much as running its own separate calendar, and this August it happens to be a loud one. The World Dog Surfing Championships return to Linda Mar Beach on August 1, drawing dog surfers and their handlers for a day of heats, partner tents, and the kind of spectacle that turns a normal beach morning into an event. The next day, Pacifica Runners hosts the annual Tiki Trot, a 5K and 10K with a scenic coastal course, tiki-themed costumes encouraged, medals and snacks included.

Linda Mar is also home to the Sanchez Art Center, the city's primary venue for visual art and the base for rotating exhibitions from the Art Guild of Pacifica, and to Burger Board, the surf-adjacent burger spot known for the Wiped-Out and Hang Loose burgers, dog-friendly and often crowded on nice afternoons. None of this is new because of the pier closure. It's simply what Linda Mar was already good at, and this August it's getting more attention because it isn't competing with a pier full of its own draw.

What's actually on the calendar

Winters Tavern and the Longboard Bar and Venue continue to carry Pacifica's live music scene through the rest of the month, and the Pacifica Spindrift Players keep community theater running for anyone looking for an evening that isn't centered on a beach or a bar. Further out, the Pacific Coast Fog Fest returns the last full weekend of September, an event the city has run since 1986 that has raised more than $1.25 million for local community groups over its history.

The split may outlast the summer

It's tempting to treat this as a temporary inconvenience, the kind of thing that resolves itself once the city finds funding and rebuilds. But the math argues otherwise. A $19 million repair estimate from 2023 turned into a $64 million reconstruction problem within three years, and the federal grant that once looked like a likely funding source is not expected to be usable in time, which is why the county is asking the state to step in instead. That's not a timeline anyone can promise a fast resolution on.

Which means the split you're seeing this August, Rockaway Beach absorbing the foot traffic that used to end at a pier and a cafe, Linda Mar building its own draw around dog surfing championships and a running club, may not be a summer detour. It may be closer to what Pacifica's daily rhythm looks like for a while. Worth noticing now, before it just becomes the normal way this town works.

If you're already living here and thinking about what a home in this market actually looks like once you factor in a shifting waterfront, or you're a longtime Pacifica owner curious how these changes might shape buyer interest down the road, Michael Soon knows this coastline block by block. Reach out anytime for a neighborhood conversation, no pressure, just someone who's paying attention to the same changes you are.