We're in an L.A. mood! Some of our most spirited riders, Tony & Peggy, recently explored the beautiful California coast and told us all about how their eBikes Lectrified their camping adventures!
Tony & Peggy Barthel are long-time veterans of the RV industry and use their vast experience to create StressLess Camping, a podcast, website, and resource for new and experienced RVers and campers alike to learn more, spend less, and turn every adventure into a "StressLess" camping experience.
The last time we caught up with the pair, they told us all about their South Dakota adventure. Now, we're ready to take it out west! Let's jump in and explore El Segundo with them.
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Welcome to the Gold Coast!
Hi - It's Tony and Peggy here from StressLess Camping! We recently camped alongside the gorgeous California coast, and we wanted to tell you a little bit about the awesome eBiking opportunities in the area.
You might only know of the little beach city of El Segundo because of the 1990 song I Left My Wallet in El Segundo by A Tribe Called Quest but if you happen to be in the Los Angeles area, there’s more to know. In fact, El Segundo is one of the very few places in the Los Angeles area where you can take your RV and legally camp on the beach.
Okay, so it’s not really El Segundo. It’s Dockweiler State Beach but there was once talk of renaming it El Segundo Beach.
What’s so great about this little beach town anyway? It’s kinda weird, but in a good way.
Dockweiler RV Park is also located along the bike path that follows the beach from Torrance all the way up to Santa Monica. You can camp here in your RV, if that’s your thing, and gain access to miles and miles of beautifully paved bike paths that are the gateway to cities all over what is referred to as LA’s South Bay.
Many of these cities, including El Segundo, have embraced eBike riders. El Segundo has also done a great job of putting bike paths into the city. That city, too, has really expanded the number of reasons to visit.
Getting to El Segundo from the RV park, or the beach bicycle path, is easy along Imperial Highway where a bike path follows the road in a moderate incline up from the beach. Make a right on Main Street and you’re on your way.
There was once some claim that El Segundo is the only city in the US that has no streets that aren’t hilly so I found myself adjusting my Lectric eBike’s pedal assist between one and three as I navigated the hills into town. If you really want a workout, you could come into El Segundo via Grand Avenue as that’s a relatively steep incline but also one with a nice bike lane.
In addition to the bike-friendly roads, there are also places to secure your ride while you’re visiting the various businesses in town. In fact, El Segundo has become a popular enough destination that we found parking much, much easier with our Lectric eBikes than when we made the mistake of driving into town with our truck on a Friday night.
What to Eat
El Segundo has really upped its foodie game with a lot of little locally-owned restaurants. There are also a couple of breweries in town. Our first stop is the Richmond Bar & Grill. This place has been serving up great burgers for decades and continues to do so to this day.
If you’re truly brave you could try a Killer Burger, which is a burger, and a Polish dog under one bun.
I went for the Fiesta Breast which features a green chili on a chicken breast sandwich. It’s quite good and when you get the choice of fries or chips, go with their home-made thick-cut chips. These are long-time favorites of customers.
The Richmond also has a number of guest beers from local and not-so-local breweries. So if a great burger or dog and a glass of beer is your thing, you’ve found a great place to spend an afternoon.
Another place we visited was Southwest Bread, which is a bakery that serves sandwiches and bagels. There’s something very special when someone makes their own bread and we had to take a loaf home just to continue the experience. We must warn you, get an early start because they sell out daily!
We had both lunch and breakfast here. Tony had the Hammerland, a tuna sandwich, and Peggy had the Pier which was mozzarella, tomatoes, pesto, balsamic glaze, arugula, and she added turkey.
We have visited El Segundo in the past many times (remember the RV park on the beach?) and have also gone to Rock & Brews which was founded by KISS band members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. We like the almost Oktoberfest-like atmosphere with the long tables and open ceiling. This works in Southern California where pesky rain and winter are essentially just something you see in postcards.
Owing to the musical founders, there are a lot of TVs all over playing music videos which are fun to watch while the menu and food are certainly decent and varied.
Shopping
If you’re into vintage vinyl, El Segundo is the place to be as Studio Antiques and Vinyl is a treasure trove for this format. Owned by Sally and Laurence Martin, who you might know from TV shows Baggage Battles and Storage Wars, there is something for every sort of vinyl aficionado here.
From pristine vintage to used, rare, and popular the vinyl selection here is huge. Honestly, if this is your thing you could easily spend a day flipping through all the boxes of records they have on display. There’s other stuff for sale in El Segundo, but this is where we spent a day.
Nightlife
Another frequent favorite of ours is the Purple Orchid Exotic Tiki Lounge. Yep, they have a tiki bar! And it’s a good one with puffer fish hanging from the ceiling and other nautical nonsense. The lighting and atmosphere here are also on point.
But you come in for the tiki drinks and they have them. Of course, they have a unique Mai Thai, which is something every good tiki bar should have. Tony chose a Funky Monkey which is a banana-inspired drink and one that goes down very, very easily. Peggy opted for a blend of Kailua, pineapple juice, and coconut rum called a Coconut Kiss.
El Segundo is also home to one of the more unusual movie theaters you’ll find in the Old Town Music Hall. This 1928 movie theater has a giant Wurlitzer Theater Pipe Organ. The monstrous instruments were used before movies had sound and were played by particularly skilled musicians as the accompaniment to the silent movies.
In fact, they do show silent movies at this theater as well as other vintage films and presentations.
A show at this theater always includes a performance on the Wurlitzer and often that includes a singalong to songs that are period-correct for this big vintage instrument. It really is something quite memorable and many of the people in today’s movie industry are patrons of this vintage theater.
Museums
There are a couple of museums in El Segundo with one being a particular favorite - the Zimmerman Automobile Driving Museum. While many museums full of vintage cars are static displays of slowly-decaying cars, the Automobile Driving Museum actually has mechanics on hand to keep the machines running.
The proof of that comes on Sundays when several of the old vehicles are brought out onto the street and you can get taken for a ride. From Josef Stalin’s Packard to Eleanor Roosevelt’s Plymouth and many, many other cars the museum is fun to walk through with docents who explain the provenance of the vehicles.
While we didn’t visit The El Segundo Museum of Art (ESMoA) it is a self-titled “art laboratory,” offering visitors a range of artistic experiences that go above and beyond the traditional museum visit. Admission to ESMoA is free, and the museum is open to the public from Thursdays through Sundays.
Where to Stay
If you’re not an RVer, there are plenty of chain hotels on the east side of El Segundo.
If RVing is your thing Dockweiler State Beach offers a newly-paved campground right along the bike path. While the campsites are very tight, they do offer full hookups. There are also picnic tables and charcoal grills at each site although I wish there weren’t as the picnic table was right where I wanted to park the back door of our travel trailer.
Those picnic tables are firmly rooted into the ground so there’s no moving them unless you happen to have a hacksaw with you and I’m reasonably sure the campground folk would take issue with your sawing activity. So we had to move the trailer forward which left less space for our pickup to park.
Being right along the bike path though means this is incredibly convenient to all the other beach cities and their cool and unique shops, restaurants, and bars. But some might overlook El Segundo and it’s definitely worth visiting.
Why did they name the town “The Second?”
If your Spanish is halfway decent you may have picked up that this town is named “The Second.” El Segundo. There’s a reason for that.
The town was essentially founded by the Richmond Oil Company in 1917. The proximity to the ocean meant that they could bring in oil tankers and supply the refinery with crude oil easily. In fact, you’ll still see oil tankers off the coast that use a pipeline to supply the huge refinery to this day.
This was the company’s second oil refinery with the first being up in Richmond, California. Now you see where the name came from since Richmond was already taken!