We arrived at the pier and luckily found parking on the crowded street. It was similar to Santa Monica beach but much smaller. We found a place to have lunch, a locally owned place, Sugar Shack Cafe.
Here most of the places were locally owned restaurants, bars, retail and tourist nicknack type stores. Here I saw a lot of white people. It was however pretty busy, but that was most likely due to the long weekend. In general, I'm assuming it is most busy in the summer, during surfing months, because that is what Huntington Beach is known for.
We walked up onto the pier. Here they only had two stores, both pretty small and just had other tourist stuff. This is quite different than the pier of Santa Monica.
Going back to the reading of Orange County, it seems as if this pier is not for major commercial area. It is mostly for people who enjoy going to the beach. When driving around the area I found many enclaves of homes which look much like suburbia. For example, while driving on Beach Blvd, it was full of all different chains of restaurants, retail and grocery store. The Street parallel to it, Newland was quite empty, retail wise. It was where all the homes were. There was no public transport, although I did see some bus stops. Here you would have to drive your car to one spot where you could park in a plaza, much more parking (all free, in comparison to LA), and spend hours in just one plaza.
At the 405 freeway entrance they had an area called Bella Terra where they had a movie theatre which we went to, and then they had other big branded chain stores like Burlington Coat Factory and Barnes and Nobles.
This was the perfect example of post-suburbia.
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