The Santa Monica Pier Corporation will honor local legends at the inaugural “PIERfect Benefit” on Sept. 6.
Attendees will gather at the historic Merry Go-Round Building on Santa Monica Pier from 3:30-7:30 p.m. to celebrate the pier’s history and honor Judy Abdo and Larry Barber with the inaugural Santa Monica Pier Awards.
Abdo served as an original board member of the Santa Monica Pier Corporation, then the Santa Monica Pier Restoration Corporation, in the 1980s and fought for the pier to remain open and accessible to the public. Originally a school teacher, she went on to become the first out-lesbian Mayor of Santa Monica, with a career spent advocating for rent control, education and pier accessibility. Barber led the movement to save the pier from demolition in the 1970s as the chair of Friends of the Santa Monica Pier. While working as a cook at Al’s Kitchen, Barber’s activism played a major part in saving the pier.
Santa Monica Pier Corporation executive director Jim Harris said it could not have been easier to convince the Board that the two were worthy of recognition.
“It’s very important that we continually remind our public that places like the pier are fragile and you need to have advocacy,” he said. “You need to have people fighting for them all the time or something that seems unimaginable, like tearing down the pier and replacing it with a bridge to a man-made island, those are the realities that are out there.”
The event will support the Pier Corporation’s annual programming including concerts, festivals, historical presentations and the annual “Save the Pier” play, which depicts the community effort in the 1970s to rescue the pier from Santa Monica City Council plans to demolish it and build a manmade island.
“We have been producing these wonderful community events and doing these tours for so long, we are asking the community to help out and invest in our organization so that we can do more,” Harris said.
To further their efforts of beautifying the pier and expanding public programming, the Pier Corporation will announce the creation of a new nonprofit called Friends of the Santa Monica Pier at the benefit, Harris said. The new nonprofit will help the Pier Corporation accomplish future goals like implementing security ambassadors on the pier and building a statue of Pete Peterson, a legendary Santa Monica lifeguard who invented the lifeguard rescue tube.
The benefit will help the Pier Corporation launch an initiative of bringing 200 children from communities in Compton, Downtown L.A. and the inner city to the pier.
“For most of them, it’ll be the first time they’ve ever been to the pier or the beach,” Harris said. “We’re bringing these children in with chaperones to experience a day on the pier for free. And that’s something that I'm very proud of.”
The event, which was rescheduled from its original date due to the L.A. wildfires in January, will also raise money for the Pali Strong Foundation – a community organization providing relief to those affected by the wildfires.
For tickets and information, visit santamonicapier.org/pierfectbenefit25.
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BY SAM MULICK