REDONDO BEACH, Calif. — The BeachLife Festival in Redondo Beach returned as South Bay's biggest event since the pandemic. Event organizers, the City of Redondo Beach and the Redondo Beach Police Chief say there was quite a bit of preparation that went into putting a music festival like this on with the pandemic, but the attendees couldn’t be happier.
It was time for her to let her hair down after nearly two years without one of Mary Schatz’s favorite things in this life, concerts.
She says she came to Redondo Beach all the way from Indiana just for the BeachLife Festival.
"I have been closed in for too long and I need to get my concert rocks off so I figured why go to a bunch of small concerts when I can go to a big one!” Schatz said.
That it is. The BeachLife Festival organizers said up to 10,000 people attended the event and they required every one of them to be vaccinated or test negative for COVID.
Providing this testing was one of the more stressful hurdles Beach Life organizers had to navigate when the company that was supposed to be providing this testing for free pulled out at the very last minute. They found a replacement, but attendees had to pay for the PCR tests that were on site.
Schatz and her friend didn't have to worry about that though, they showed proof of their vaccination to get wristband number two.
“I’m ready to be around people again and I think everybody else is too because the isolation has cost us a lot," she said.
Mary said she was there to get the collective energy back and performer Jim Lindberg is excited to help provide it. The lead singer for local punk rock band Pennywise is one of more than 50 headliners at the three-day event, but he’s also the brand director for the entire Beach Life Festival, overseeing the final touches as the doors open.
"It’s tough because coming back and putting together a huge festival like this, there’s a ton of moving parts and coordinating so many people, even in normal conditions, but everything that’s going on just really added to it,” he explained.
Redondo Beach City Councilmember Christian Horvath said the COVID safety protocols were a crucial component in bringing this festival back after the 2020 hiatus.
He said a lot went into making sure a show like this could go on. "You’ll see changes between the last time and this time that [the founder of the BeachLife Festival] and his team made to ensure that there was enough space so that if people didn’t want to be too close to a crowd, they could kind of separate," Horvath said. "You’ll see more screens. There’s an enormous attention to detail and ensuring that it is safe for anybody that wants to come.”
Safe from a public health standpoint, but also from a public safety one, too. Redondo Beach Police Chief Keith Kauffman says this event is the biggest undertaking they have in the city.
"We just hope that nothing ever happens but in the event that something does, you’ll see a very professional organization on display," Chief Kauffman explained.
There was a lot of music, food and drinks on display, too. Mary said it was a dream come true.
“This is amazing and it feels like normal," she said.
It was a significant turnout for the sold-out show and South Bay’s biggest event since outside reopened.