by Garrison Frost

Jumping off the Manhattan Beach Pier can kill you. That should be clear by now, judging by the fact that every few years we hear another story of someone taking the leap and drowning.

The most recent was in April when a 20-year-old Torrance man jumped while celebrating with friends. That story was typical: a seemingly healthy man jumped off the pier in the middle of the night, unaware of just how hard it will be to swim in the cold and choppy water. As with most of these sad stories, the one in April demonstrated that it's usually not the jump that's particularly dangerous; it's the swim. People forget how long the pier is when they walk out to the end, and fail to consider how hard it will be to swim that same distance back in conditions that are far from optimal.

It's probably impossible to say for sure whether the Manhattan Beach Pier attracts more jumpers than either the Hermosa Beach Pier or the Redondo Beach Pier. One usually doesn't sign a clipboard before running out there in your underwear in the middle of the night. But since there's nothing to indicate that the Manhattan Beach pier is more dangerous than the others, the stories might indicate that more jumping is going on there. Anyway, I'm going to choose to believe that more people jump off the Manhattan Beach pier than the others for no other reason that it just seems like a nicer pier from which to leap. The Redondo pier, with its asymmetrical shape and police substation, would seem like a bad spot for even the drunkest reveler. Hermosa might seem good, but again there are a lot of eyes in the lifeguard headquarters. No, Manhattan's pier, with its picturesque roundhouse and relatively solitary nighttime environs, probably seems better to potential jumpers.

Make no mistake, the Manhattan Beach Pier isn't the South Bay's suicide equivalent to the San Francisco Bridge. People who jump off the Manhattan Beach Pier expect to survive the leap, and most do. But the fact that every so often someone doesn't should remind us that it's a stupid idea. Moreover, and this writer can speak from personal experience, it's not even that fun.

Jumping off the pier always entails one or more of the following (setting aside, of course, the increased chance you'll die):

• Running down the pier barefoot in your underwear.
• Putting on sandy clothes over your wet body and underwear.
• Running down the pier barefoot in your bathing suit.
• Swimming about a quarter of a mile in unpredictable water.
• Freezing one's ass off, regardless of the time of year.
• Standing there freezing on the edge while one or more of your friends begs you not to jump.
• The complete elimination of any chance of scoring with a member of the opposite sex that night.

And I'm only talking about those who plan ahead. Forget the suffering of those who leap in wearing their clothes, who are drunker than they thought or aren't good swimmers. All for about a second of excitement that one could easily acquire from a high school high dive.

If people in the South Bay want to do something truly daring, they should try getting a bank loan, getting a permit for a remodel or driving the Long Beach freeway in a compact car. Now that's excitement. Jumping off the Manhattan Beach Pier doesn't live up to its reputation.

(June 12, 2006)

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