The city of Manhattan Beach was not always called Manhattan Beach. At one time the town was called Pacific Shores. There were two people who basically owned all the property in present day Manhattan Beach. One of the men wanted to call the town Pacific Shores, and the other man wanted to call it Manhattan Beach in honor of Manhattan New York. The myth goes that the two men argued for a long time and finally had to decide what to call the city, so they flipped a coin one side representing Pacific Shores, and one side representing Manhattan Beach. The coin landed with the side representing Manhattan Beach face up, which is why the city south of LAX is know today as Manhattan Beach, but could have just as easily been named Pacific Shores.

Michael believes that the reason for this story is mainly because there is just no real interesting reason for the name of our city. He believes that it may even be more just so that we could say that our city was named for a reason.

I find that this is a great possibility, but there is also the fact that only people in Manhattan Beach are going to know this tale. I do not think there are going to be many people other than residents who are going to want to even know about this tale. I am concerned that maybe even new residents of the city are not even interested in this tale. It is so bland that most people in the city probably don’t even know about it.

Those people that do know about this tale are most likely people who have lived in Manhattan Beach for a long time, and also people that have families. It is the task of most young elementary school students to write a report or give a presentation on their town. This being the case it is going to be people who have lived in Manhattan Beach for a longer time that are going to know about a tale like this.