The show must go on, as they say, and it will in Seal Beach where for the first time in eight years the iconic Bay Theatre will be open to the public.
The restored theater will come back to life on Jan. 25, offering movies on the big screen and live entertainment on the stage in the historic building that has been a marquee staple at the top of the quaint Main Street since the 1940s.
The reopening of the Seal Beach Bay Theatre is the latest in a string of bygone-era film houses that have been resurrected in recent years, including the Lido Theater in Newport Beach just a few months ago and the Rivian South Coast Theater in Laguna Beach in 2023 – restored community gathering places that aim at preserving a nostalgic vibe of yesteryear.
Chris Sardelis in Seal Beach on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, is backdropped by a scene from his Harbour Chronicles surfing documentary that will play in the newly rennovated art deco Bay Theatre. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Paul Dunlap, owner and developer of the Bay Theatre in Seal Beach on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, outside the art-deco building which will open after 8 years of renovation (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Chris Sardelis in Seal Beach on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, is backdropped by a scene from his Harbour Chronicles surfing documentary that will play in the newly rennovated art deco Bay Theatre. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Chris Sardelis’, left, surfing documentary, Harbour Chronicles, will play in owner Paul Dunlap’s newly rennovated Bay Theatre. They are pictured outside the art deco building in Seal Beach on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Paul Dunlap, owner and developer of the Bay Theatre in Seal beach on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, sits inside the art-deco building which will open after 8 years of renovation (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Chris Sardelis in Seal Beach on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, is backdropped by a scene from his Harbour Chronicles surfing documentary that will play in the newly rennovated art deco Bay Theatre. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Show Caption1 of 6Chris Sardelis in Seal Beach on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, is backdropped by a scene from his Harbour Chronicles surfing documentary that will play in the newly rennovated art deco Bay Theatre. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Expand“I really liked the way it fit into Old Town,” Paul Dunlap, a real estate developer with a passion for historic preservation, said of the Bay Theatre. “It was the last property that needed to be restored to preserve Old Town, pretty much the way it has been for decades. That appealed to me. I just got a really good feeling walking through it.”
The vision for the Bay Theatre is not just to show films, but to host live music, comedy shows, theatrical plays, dances, seminars, workshops and corporate events.
The Bay Theatre will open to the public with a fitting film that pays tribute to Rich Harbour, a surfboard builder who opened a shop at age 18 in 1962 just across Main Street that was a staple in the community. Harbour died in 2021.
“Harbour Chronicles – Shaping the Legacy,” was produced by Chris Sardelis, who as a kid spent countless hours after school at the shop sweeping up surfboard shavings and learning from the board maker, who became a mentor and a lifelong friend to him and countless other young surfers.
In the film, Sardelis spotlights not just Seal Beach’s thriving surf culture, but the city’s history as “Mayberry by the Sea,” a place where blue-collar oil workers came to live, a rough town back in the prohibition day that evolved into a quaint seaside community.
“It’s an honor, I couldn’t think of anywhere else to show it,” Sardelis said of the the film’s premiere on Jan. 25. “Everyone wants to see the story about (Harbour) and everyone wants to see the Bay Theatre. It’s a double whammy.”
This year marks the Bay Theatre’s 80th anniversary, and while many remnants of the 1940s-era decor and color schemes – turquoise and deep, royal red – remain, there are plenty of upgrades to create a state-of-the-art experience with new projector and audio systems and a retractable cinematic extra-wide screen, Dunlap said.
Launched in 1945, the movie house was first called the Beach Theatre, before it was bought by Fox West Coast Theatres a year later – back when the town’s population was just 3,500. The new owners gave it the name Bay Theatre.
Dunlap said he has always been drawn to the old movie houses, twice before attempting to buy historic theaters.
They have a certain mystic, he said, all unique in terms of their architecture, but with a similar goal of bringing people together to be entertained.
“I’m just really curious about what’s gone on there, who’s been there, what events have they had,” he said, “and then preserving it for the community as it was originally designed for them to enjoy it.”
He bought the building in 2016, after it had been on the market for a few years with little interest from buyers. He thought the reopening would be a two-year project.
It took years to draw up plans, bring the building up to code and gain approvals, but after nearly a decade, the building is ready to welcome guests.
And the community is ready to welcome it back. Tickets for the Harbour film on opening weekend sold out within six hours, so another weekend of showings was added, those tickets, too, quickly gobbled up.
With such a demand, another weekend of showings has been added for Feb. 8.
Some people who snatched up seats are die-hard Harbour fans, the surfboard shaper amassing a cult-like following through the decades and touching many lives of surfers with a shared passion for wave riding.
For others, it’s a chance to get a first glimpse of the newly renovated theater years in the making, said Sardelis.
Creating the film and sharing Harbour’s legacy was an honor, a way to give back to the man who gave a latchkey kid a safe place, community and life direction, said Sardelis, now 65.
Sardelis, now a well-known surf photographer and firefighter by trade, was drawn as a young kid to documenting moments, taking his “Super 8” camera everywhere he went, capturing moments on the sand and surf, in the shop and around Seal Beach.
Like Harbour, he had a passion for history and appreciated his mentor’s legacy as “the longest-running surf shop in the world in this tiny town of Seal Beach.”
The film features icons such as Pipeline master Gerry Lopez, women’s champion surfer Jericho Poppler, longtime friend and filmmaker Greg MacGillivray – who let Sardelis dip into his surf archives for the film – as well as Sean Collins, founder of Surfline.com and a former team rider, and other locals who grew up at the shop.
Sardelis was urged by friend Greg Escalante, who helped create the 2010 book, “Harbour Chronicles,” to make the film. So Sardelis, knowing Harbour’s health was declining, started interviewing the surfboard maker back in 2012, the camera rolling.
“He was important to me and a lot of other people,” Sardelis said. “He gave me a lot of opportunities and taught me a lot as a father figure… he was always coaching me. I always listened.”
Sardelis said he is also relishing the opportunity to educate the next generation about Harbour’s influence, and get them stoked on watching surf films on the big screen, the way it was back in the ’60s and ’70s when eager surfers filled movie theaters, hooting and hollering as wave riders got barrelled or battered on a wipeout.
The meshing of the two – the Bay Theatre and the homage to Harbour – harkens back to a simpler time, before cell phones and the internet, when kids like Sardelis used to hang out at the surf shop talking about the day’s waves, or when people would go to the theater to be entertained before most households had televisions.
“For this town, this theater and this movie are really special,” said Robert Howson, who owns the retail shop at Harbour Surfboards that still, as it has since the ’60s, sits just across Main Street from the Bay Theatre. “What this theater means to this town and how the movie expresses not only the Harbour story, which is part of it, but the story of Seal Beach, is really fantastic.”
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