Pacifica angling icon Joe Jimno died Monday. Mr. Jimno owned and operated the bait and tack store, Rusty Hook, for the past 11 years after a 20-year run on the Pacifica Pier. A memorial service will be July 16 at 1 p.m at the American Legion Hall in Rockaway. 650-355-8303.
POLICE are looking for suspects who tried to rob a Pacifica man while he was walking along Beach Boulevard one recent evening. The victim told officials he was walking at about 8:30 p.m. Aug. 11 when five people, four young men and a woman, confronted him. One subject demanded money while another brandished a knife. The assailants pushed the man against the handrail while they rifled through his pockets. They then walked north toward the pier. The suspects are described as African American, 18-20 years old, wearing dark colored and baggy clothing. Anyone with information about the crime is encouraged to call the Pacifica Police Department at 738-7314. Article at the Pacifica Tribune.
The vandals who pried up concrete benches from the Pacifica Pier and possibly tossed them over the side into the ocean cost the city nearly $6,000. That’s the estimated cost to replace the benches, which were discovered missing July 20. The culprits also pried up a steel plate from the floor of the pier.
From the Pacifica Tribune Police Beat.
South side: It is July, and we do remember the chirpy news crews out at Pacifica Pier, reporting on the “unbelievable schools of mighty salmon” and “masses of enthusiastic anglers. Back to you, Brenda.” Seems impossible, given the past two seasons, but it happened, salmon were indeed caught from Pacifica Pier, hauled in over the battered sides. Local legend, from not too far back, has it that a thousand king salmon were landed from the pier. In a single day. Last year? It didn’t happen. This year? Best we can scrounge is a month-old report of two salmon landed, both silvers, which hopefully were briefly admired and released. Still, it’s the pier, the great L, the Rev. Herschell Harkins Memorial Pier, if you’re formal, running a quarter mile out over the sea. And something is always happening, day or night, perch or smelt or flounder or who knows. No boat needed. Just a willingness to fish, be friendly and happily freeze. By way of a slightly more serious approach, the neoprene-clad surf fishers, working the beach on both sides of the pier, are said to land the very occasional striped bass, and nearly all of these caught very early, right about the time night gives up to dawn.
Brian Hoffman
Thursday, July 26, 2007
This article appeared on page D - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Pier Pressure
We made our first venture out crabbing recently. After finding a disappointing amount of information online for sport crabbing in the San Francisco bay area we decided to start this site. It’s kind of a blog, and hopefully it will also kind of be a place for crabbing information. For now it’s just kind of what it is. Anyway, someone on LiveJournal referred us to an online article from 1995 that mentioned a couple piers for Dungeness Crabs which is what we were looking for. I’ve only been rock crabbing in the bay at Fort Baker Pier in the past. One of the ones mentioned by the article was Pacifica Pier in, you guessed it, Pacifica!
Rest of article at Crab Hoop.
PACIFICA — Lots of people visit the Pacifica Pier to watch the waves crash far below their feet. Little did they know that for years, the ocean has also been taking pieces of the neighborhood along with it.
The extent of the damage was a total mystery until early this week, when city officials cut up a large section of concrete in the sidewalk in front of the Pacifica Pier and discovered a huge, gaping sinkhole underneath — deep enough to stack three rusty cars.
“We didn’t know (the sinkhole) was there until the concrete started bouncing under people’s feet,” said Public Works Director Scott Holmes. Public Works employees have since cordoned off the area and opened up the top of the hole to get a better look, but they’re still not sure how far underground it goes. Holmes put the measurements at 30 feet wide and 11 feet long, reaching all the way from the edge of the sidewalk along Beach Boulevard to the place where the ocean meets the shore at the base of Pacifica Pier. The pier itself remains open.
Locals must now step carefully around the equivalent of a small construction site at the base of the pier — that is, if they dare walk by at all. On Thursday, Beach Boulevard was doused in seawater as wave after wave pounded the seawall and sprayed across the street, sprinkling the cars parked in front of homes 50 feet away. Any passerby was likely to get soaked.”I watch the rail as I walk along. It’s very wet,” said local resident David La Trobe, observing the scene in his hiking boots.
Crews will begin fixing the sinkhole this Monday, and will most likely fill it with a base of gravel and sand, said Holmes. He said the repairs would be paid for through a grant awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency after the City of Pacifica declared a state of emergency following last winter’s storms.
Sinkholes are common along Beach Boulevard, although rarely do they go undetected for so long, according to Holmes. He said the city had already detected two smaller gaps developing under the sidewalk closer to Paloma Avenue, a quarter-mile away. The last big problem developed after the El Nio winter storms of 1998, when part of the seawall was so weak that it pulled away from the street and collapsed into the ocean. The water rushing in created a sinkhole about 30 feet north of the current one, according to Holmes.
He called the sinkhole problem “a constant headache.” But said that once they were poured with the concrete mixture, the holes would disappear for the duration.
“We keep filling in the voids, and we will fix everything sooner or later,” said Holmes.
Back at the base of the pier, Public Works engineer Victor Dominguez removed a thin wood board weighed down with sandbags. He pointed into the dark hole, at the bottom of which the tide could be seen licking the rocks underground.
“This was completely full of dirt,” he said. “The waves came in and have been eating it away more and more.”
His boss, Public Works parks supervisor Ron Fasconda, explained that over time, the force of the waves had eroded the protective metal sheet at the base of Pacifica Pier. The water then worked its way behind the concrete-reinforced rocks piled up behind it and started digging the sand and dirt out from underneath the sidewalk. He said the repairs would only take a couple of days once begun.
The pier itself has been eroding for decades. City officials have spent $2.5 million on repairs to the rusting structure since the 1980s, according to Holmes. The first four piles that front the place where the sinkhole began are in particularly bad shape and have been repaired before. The city will begin work on the pier with some grant money it received from the California Coastal Conservancy this spring, although the money will not go toward replacing the metal barrier that used to keep the water out from under the sidewalk.
But all the money in the world could not stop the onslaught of the ocean at high tide, say officials. Workers in the city’s Engineering Department are constantly replacing 2- and 4-ton boulders they add along the beach to shore up the seawall. The rocks eventually sink under their own weight and wash out to sea, where they are rescued and put back in place.
“You’re looking at a pretty ferocious ocean that is keeping workers busy trying to hold the line,” said Holmes. “Whether you’re going to win the battle or not depends on how much effort you put into it.”
By Julia Scott of the Oakland Tribune
PACIFICA: The stripers rode the evening tide into the beaches Tuesday evening. Since then, no one’s seen them. Still, for the trailblazers out there, an anchovy fished from the pier or a Hair Raiser-type lure cast from shore may find you a fish. Information: (650) 355-0690.
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