Pier

Next Monday is Memorial Day, when we remember loved ones who are no longer with us, especially those who lost their lives in battle or served in the military to keep America free. When I was growing up in Los Angeles, this day was especially important to my family. Back then it was referred to as Decoration Day. We would pick flowers in our garden that morning and head over to the Odd Fellows Cemetery in East L.A. to place them on the graves of our relatives. Afterward, we would watch a parade on Florence Avenue.

Tariq Malik When Gary Hoisington takes his bike out for a weekend spin, he takes his office with him. The 20-year resident has brought something new to the city's Downtown area, a taxi service with a twist -- transporting tourists and residents about town in a bicycle built for three. "We're on a trial basis for this summer, but I'd love to see this go year-round," said Hoisington, owner of a Huntington Beach antique and classic bicycle shop.

Huntington Beach is gearing up for the SoCal Independent Film Festival with free family movies by the pier before it kicks off 10 days of film in September. The film festival is in its fifth year and has grown from a five day event with 30 movies to a 10-day festival boasting 204 selections including world premieres, shorts, features and documentaries. The festival was founded by Brian Barsuglia to share the art and cultural aspects of film. He said people will get the chance to view movies they might never get to see otherwise.

Debbie Cook as the mayor of Huntington Beach? Who would have thunk it? But here we are in 2001 and Cook, the longtime nemesis of city officials, the watchdog of developers and political corruption is now the No. 1 politico in town. How things change. It was Cook, along with former Councilman Dave Sullivan and the forces of Huntington Beach Tomorrow, who mounted a referendum campaign in the early 1990s to preserve beach land and views that were increasingly being threatened by development.

I am new to this community, having lived for many years in Long Beach. It is a fine thing to live so close to the enormity of the Pacific Ocean and for the most part, my family has adjusted to the differences we find in terms of population, distances between points A and N, and the myriad of sensory details that make up daily experience. My daughter and I, wanting to get to some comforting vibration, decided to go to the candlelight vigil on the pier on Thursday evening.

Mike Sciacca A towering mass of steel and wood turned a blank canvas of sand into a monstrous festival site on the south side of the Huntington Beach Pier. A crew of about 100 was busy constructing grandstands and arenas to house the Bank of the West Beach Games featuring the Honda U.S. Open of Surfing presented by O'Neill. Although empty now with a ghost-town-like quality, the site will host more than 600 athletes from across the globe and attract an estimated 300,000 spectators to an event combining surfing, action sports, music, exhibits and vendor booths beginning Saturday and running through Aug. 1. Construction on the site began more than a week ago. "We're back and bigger than ever," said James Leitz, vice president for International Management Group X Sports, which took over the event in 2001.

Summer's just about here and the kids are counting the hours before they get out of school. The weather has been quite typical of this time of year, the morning June gloom, or cloudy skies the first half of the day, turning to sunshine later. How about that water temp -- 67 degrees, maybe the El Nino water temps, when it rose to the 70s, will return. The surf has still been that mix of swells, from both directions, in the waist- to chest-high plus zone.

The National Scholastic Surfing Assn. held its Western Championships on the south side of the Huntington Pier Thursday through Sunday. A nice small scale combo swell kept the action intense as the West’s best surfers battled it out for West Coast titles. Ounce again some of our Surf City’s hot talent pool excelled in home turf. Starting with the little guys, H.B.’s Kainoa Igarashi won two western’s titles and won the overall in explorer menehune’s and open boys as well, pretty incredible stuff.

When it came to fishing, this week's Main Street business owner had no equal. In fact, our Look Back person would have preferred fishing on the pier to anything else. This week, we'll conclude our series on Main Street business owners by looking at Huntington Beach's most avid fisherman, John Parnakian. John Isaac Parnakian was born Sept. 18, 1918, in Philadelphia to Isaac and Valatin Parnakian. His family moved to California where John attended Washington grammar school and later a private high school in Pasadena.