Two-Nil
Summer Hard Week 1
Friday at noon was an excellent time to enter my soccer fan phase. Like most American men my age, I have spent most of my life railing against the sport, despite my participation in it as a kid. The reasons Americans have lagged the World in both soccer fandom and success are well-trodden: low scores, games that end in draws, a clock that runs the wrong way, diva-like flopping, and stoppage time controlled by a central authority like the EU.
Despite this, there I was on a barstool at Ercole’s in Manhattan Beach, cheering on the US Men’s team as they beat the Aussies 2-0. Ercole’s may be the perfect place to waste a Friday on soccer.
The dive bar opened in 1929 and doesn’t try to be something other than what it’s always been. I have always known Ercole’s as an old-man bar, but that doesn’t seem to be true any longer because everyone there was my age. I met an EMT once who liked to drink there, and he told me he bought the place one of those automatic defibrillators because he was certain they would need it. I never asked the bartender if this was true.
If your health regimen allows it, have one of their delicious burgers with a cold beer. The patties are thick, like almost two inches of ground beef, sourced from the butcher next door at Manhattan Meats. They also have chicken sandos and hot dogs, but I have always stuck to the burger.
Don’t come in looking for an elevated burger that some influencer will brag about. You will not find Gruyère, blue cheese mousse, or gold leaf here. This is an American cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a bag of chips-on-the-side situation. Solid and authentic. They are frying them up on a little flat grill next to the window on Manhattan Avenue, which also serves as a take-out window. This is particularly helpful for parents because Ercole’s is strictly 21 and over. Refreshing since the Aviator Nation Generation has started bringing their gifted children to bars and then scowling at the odd F-bomb from fully grown customers.
USA dominated the game and went up two-nil. Nil is soccer-speak for nothing. It was a clean, almost boring win, and the bar crowd cheered them on until the central authorities ended the game at around 95 minutes.
After the victory, we walked around the corner to Shellback’s, another iconic Manhattan Beach bar, with a location dating back to 1922. Like Ercole’s, Shellback’s has had a number of names and owners over the years, but the vibe is the same as it ever was. Although they aren’t related, Shellback’s feels like Ercole’s younger brother on Spring Break.
Whether you’ve been there or not, Shellback’s is well-known these days, famous for its iconic trucker hats emblazoned with the bar’s logo. The fifteen-dollar hats have been spotted on Bravo, in the middle of the jungles of Peru, and anywhere you find college students and their moms. These hats are serious business. Last 4th of July, they sold over 2,500. I personally will not be wearing one of these gems. There is irony in a town that has redeveloped away its soul but adopts a dive bar as its personal brand.
The place was packed with the hat crowd, as it should be. We drank with kids’ friends and the friends of kids, a sort of South Bay overlap that happens when you’re too old to still be wild, but too young for the old folks’ home. We saw a guy do a shoey, drink his beer straight out of his sneaker, to celebrate the US win. Impressive. Kids were drinking Fanta shots, which we also passed on. We’re old men now, relegated to voyeurism instead of participation.
Shellback’s sits at the foot of the Manhattan Beach pier, with views of the ocean. For all of our beautiful beachfront, our bars and restaurants are mostly tucked away in our villages and side streets, not on the beach. I looked out the front door at the Strand House, an upscale place with a wine list longer than these new college reading lists. It used to be a place called Beaches, which had a dance floor and a retractable roof. Valley girls would come in straight off the sand, sunburned in flip flops, smelling like Hawaiian Tropic and bad decisions.
So much of what I might think of as new in Manhattan Beach has already been there for a long time. Rock’N Fish just celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, but I still remember the restaurant that predated it, Hibachi, dark and mysterious, famous for its Navy Grog, which is still on the menu at Rock’N Fish. If they survive long enough, new places become old, and someday, someone will write this same essay about how things used to be.
Wherever land values increase, it becomes difficult for older, especially smaller, businesses to survive. That’s the way it goes. But what no appraisal can ever put a number on is the value of a place you want to sit on a Friday afternoon and not be anywhere you’re supposed to be.
The Manhattan Beach Pier was rebuilt in 1992, after a run of winter storms beat up the old one. In my view, this marked the start of the upwardly mobile trajectory that rebuilt Manhattan. I turned twenty-one that same year, the legal age to ratify a habit that had begun with a fake ID a few years before. Thirty-four years later, not much looks the same, including me. But Ercole’s and Shellback’s are holding fast.
Nobody told me that I’d be the old man at the bar someday. You just turn around, and a kid in a trucker hat is calling you sir. I guess if you stand in the same bars long enough, new kids will replace you, too. Who’s gonna tell them?
Before I ordered a ride home, I thought about the EMT and his defibrillator, and at my age, I’m grateful it might be there.
Ercole’s and Shellback’s are two-nil. And just like the US team, let’s hope that the run goes on forever.
xAP
Thanks again Ante for an informative discussion about bars and soccer in Manhatten Beach ! I’ve never seen such excitement about soccer games as this year ! Go team USA ! 💯❤️🙏🏻