Rick Hankus founded Java Man and owned Ocean Diner for decades. Both places belong to the team that runs a tiki bar on Pier Plaza. In its October 8 A La Carte column, posted October 7, Easy Reader News reported that Brian Eldridge and Patrick Mescall of the South Bay Hospitality Group have taken over both businesses. The crews are staying, including Java Man's Nicolas Herriera and Daniel Nava.

That may sound like an odd fit for a muffin-and-meatloaf operation. Eldridge and Mescall are best known for cocktails at Paddy O'Brien's, the Hula Hula Room, The Bounty Room and Tiki Kai. Their record says something else, though. For close to a decade they have bought old South Bay places that were close to vanishing and kept them running as they were. The best guide to what happens at 157 Pier Avenue and 959 Aviation Boulevard is what has already happened at a diner on PCH in Redondo.

What Hankus Actually Left Behind

Hankus came to Hermosa Beach in 1979. He grew up in Chicago and earned a journalism degree at Valparaiso University. In 1986, with a friend's backing, he bought a diner on Aviation Boulevard and renamed it Ocean Diner. Easy Reader gives the old name as Granny's Diner, while the diner's own site and the Daily Breeze call it Grandma's Place. He kept the chef he inherited, Emigdio Nunez, who was still running the kitchen.

According to Ocean Diner's history page, the 1940s look came with a 2002 remodel. His husband, Tim Biggs, told Easy Reader that Hankus loved big bands and Broadway. He piped in '40s music and hung framed World War II front pages and old toasters and waffle irons. When customers praised the "'50s theme," he corrected them. The menu leans Midwestern: biscuits and gravy, meatloaf, Boston cream pie, plus oatmeal crème brûlée with caramelized brown sugar.

Java Man opened in 1992 inside a little red 1929 beach cottage. Hankus pictured a beatnik coffeehouse in the spirit of Hermosa's Insomniac from the 1950s. When Wi-Fi arrived around 2000, the cottage became a shared workspace for the price of a coffee and a muffin. In its memorial, Easy Reader noted that one Starbucks down the street and two up the street had all recently closed. Hankus put Java Man's staying power down to customers who were "baked in" to the community.

His hardest year was 2010. The redesign of upper Pier Avenue took out street parking for close to a year when it was supposed to take a few months. He later agreed it paid off, because the project added the parkette where his customers now drink their coffee in the sun.

The Continuity Is in the Crew

Neither place depended on the owner being visible. Easy Reader reported that many longtime Java Man regulars had been surprised to learn that the quiet, well-dressed man carrying trays of morning glory muffins owned the place. Sometimes he worked the register and refused payment at random. Java Man kept winning Easy Reader's Best of the Beach coffee shop vote, and Hankus regularly turned down photos for the award so the credit would go to his crew.

That crew is what Eldridge and Mescall now own. When Easy Reader published its account in November 2025, it listed these tenures:

Easy Reader's account describes impressing out-of-town guests at Java Man this way: "Nick, or Chuy, or Daniel will greet them by name." The October report that Herriera and Nava are staying matters more to the morning routine than the name on the ownership papers.

What the New Owners Have Done Before

Eldridge and Mescall met in 2007 while bartending at Salt Creek Grill in El Segundo. In 2017 they opened Paddy O'Brien's in Redondo Beach, in the pub known for decades as O'Hearns. Then came The Torrance Tavern, the Hula Hula Room, the Bounty Room and the Sly Fox in Lawndale, all older bars and restaurants they took over. In a November 2025 profile, Eldridge told Easy Reader how he sees them:

"They're like our dinosaurs, that we just keep alive, keep going, keep growing."

Mescall put the motive more directly. "We love the little community gathering places where it's really the stamp of the neighborhood. They go away often in Southern California. And they don't come back once they're gone."

The closest comparison is Eat at Joe's, the Redondo Beach diner Joe Filkosky opened at 400 N. Pacific Coast Highway in 1969. Eldridge and Mescall took it over in August 2024 as only its third owners, after the Jordan family sold it following nearly 25 years. At the time, Mescall said they wanted to keep it "on its tracks." All 20 employees stayed. The John Wayne breakfast special is still on the menu, and the diner's site lists daily hours of 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. More than two years on, Richard Foss summed it up in this month's column: if you hadn't noticed that they run Eat at Joe's, "that's a good sign," because "they mostly left everything the same."

Tiki Kai at 73 Pier Avenue is a different kind of project, and Easy Reader called it the team's biggest venture so far. It opened November 5, 2025, behind a 14-foot wooden door designed by Peter Asmar of Asmar Studios. Inside are carvings by Tony Murphy, known as "Tiki Tony," and chef Calvin Holladay's menu includes Macadamia Mahi Mahi and Huli Huli Chicken. So the team does build new concepts. With places that already have a following, though, their habit has been to leave them alone.

The same profile adds a Hermosa connection. Eldridge and Mescall call Hilary Condren and Christina Mishef, owners of the Hermosa Beach Bottle Inn, their mentors. Condren and Mishef introduced them to the partner they later worked with on the Sportsman Bar in Corona.

What Is Known, and What Isn't

No public source has given the date or terms of the Java Man and Ocean Diner sale, and the new owners haven't announced any plans beyond keeping the staff. One thing to watch is hours. Java Man once stayed open from 6 a.m. to midnight and later closed at 5 p.m. Right now its website lists 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday. Ocean Diner's site doesn't post hours, so call before a late breakfast. It does still list the Vanilla French Toast, Oatmeal Crème Brulee and Breakfast Enchiladas.

For a first visit under the new owners, this is the order the sources point to:

1. At Java Man, a coffee and a morning glory muffin. That's the pairing Easy Reader's memorial opens with.
2. Take a seat in the Pier Avenue parkette that came out of the 2010 redesign, or inside, where the cottage is split into small, semi-private rooms.
3. At Ocean Diner, the oatmeal crème brûlée, and a cup of the coffee Biggs remembered as a fresh-roasted Kenya, Sumatra and Colombian blend under the menu line "High octane is our middle name."

Hankus was named the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce's Man of the Year in 2002 for his work with Big Brothers and AIDS support groups. For more than a dozen years he ran the kitchen for the Hermosa Kiwanis Club's annual Mama Liz Thanksgiving Dinner, which serves 400 to 600 people. When Thanksgiving comes around next month, the coffee will be poured by the same people who poured it for him.

At Liz Bird Fine Homes, we pay attention to the places that give a Hermosa morning its shape, from the cottage on Pier Avenue to the counter on Aviation. If you'd like to talk about the parts of the beach cities that change and the parts that don't, let's connect over coffee.