At the end of the historic Route 66, Santa Monica Pier extends into the Pacific packed with street vendors, burger joints, a ferris wheel...and inadequacy.
Let me first spare you some disappointment: Don’t visit Southern California in June -- the Gloom is real. Being on the water, it hits Santa Monica pretty badly. The picture in your head of a sunny beach day complemented with a turn on the ferris wheel on the pier will immediately turn to sh*t.
But this isn’t the reason to stay away from the pier -- after all, you can go pretty much any other time of the year and the weather will be perkier. But regardless of Mother Nature’s heavy hand, the pier is not that great.
If you’re heading to Santa Monica for the beach, great. Fine (though it’s not the cleanest part of the shoreline). But Santa Monica Pier itself is fairly short and not filled with anything really worth seeing. I can imagine it being a fun stop if you’ve driven the entirety of Route 66 from Chicago, a road trip I hope to do one day, but otherwise you’ll spend about 20 minutes walking the length of the pier, and unless you stop to eat or take a spin around Pacific Park (tough sell, since they charge $5 to $10 per ride), you'll probably just snag a souvenir and be on your way.
And every restaurant surrounding the pier is stupid expensive! Find me a place to eat with less than three dollar signs on Yelp in a three-mile radius, I dare you. You’re basically forced to eat at one of the kitschy tourist trap places on the pier itself, which just goes against my morals.
There’s no way you spend a whole day in Santa Monica, so the pier is but a stop on your way to its more popular sisters, Venice Beach or Malibu. *cue Miley Cyrus*