Manhattan Beach Pier

This guide to the Manhattan Beach Pier opens on a January 1988 morning when a jogger was struck by a chunk of concrete torn loose from the deck as waves crashed over it, an injury that closed the pier and revealed decades of rebar eaten bare underneath. It goes back further, to a 1913 storm that destroyed the wooden pier that stood here before, and city engineer A. L. Harris's concrete replacement, built with a rounded, fist-shaped end meant to let waves slide past rather than slam into it. The guide follows the money troubles, a bankrupt contractor, and a World War that delayed the new pier for years before it finally opened.