Rashel Mereness was on vacation when this week's record-breaking king tide relentlessly streamed water onto the Redondo Beach International Boardwalk and into her bar, so she called staff to gauge just how bad the flooding was. While on the phone Wednesday morning, one staffer watched a city trash can float by.

"I don't think anybody expected as much water as there is, so the sandbags maybe weren't sufficient," said Mereness, a co-owner of neighborhood sports bar the Slip. "But we've never experienced this. We're all from California, you know? What's weather?"

Houseboat residents parked in front of the bar came to help vacuum some of the Slip's water. Some customers paddled by on rafts and boards, above what used to be the boardwalk. Mereness and her business partners joked about adding a swim-up bar.

"At least there's no Sharknado," she said.

In an already tenuous industry marked by razor-thin margins, high rents and increasing costs for goods and labor, some of the Southland's favorite beach bars and restaurants are dumping out buckets of water this month.

Many businesses are suffering financial losses though they remain open. Earlier in October a Kelvin wave and strengthened tides due to Tropical Storm Rachel brought flooding to multiple beach communities. This week Newport Beach, Long Beach, Redondo Beach, Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach are all experiencing flooding, some with waves measuring over 8 feet in height.

Mereness, who owns the Slip with partners Randall LaFaye and Carlos Raygoza, said the ocean has breached the Redondo Beach seawall every day since Monday. They've experienced high tides before, but "this is the worst it's been," she said.

Their staff have kept the Slip relatively dry with sandbags and a Shop-Vac, hoovering out the water each morning when it floods. By afternoon when the tide recedes, the bar functions as it normally does with burgers, brews and screenings of sports matches. Some customers, she said, have been deterred from visiting given the news. LaFaye and Mereness estimate they lost around 30% of their business on Tuesday.

Last week they repainted both the bar's interior and exterior, and hope the excess water won't damage the recent work. Still, they said, they're a bit luckier than some of their pier neighbors; they have windows that fully close. Others, like brewpub Project Barley, feature roll-up doors original to the wharf's fishing community in the 1930s and '40s, making it difficult to keep water outside.

"Having an open-air bar on the waterfront is appealing to the traffic," co-owner Joe Smith said, "[but] there's an upside and a downside for sure."

Smith operates Project Barley and its adjacent operation, Next Door Bar. On Monday the sea didn't reach either business. On Tuesday it flooded both and damaged Next Door Bar's hardwood floors, which must now be replaced. He's since rolled out plastic sheeting across the floors in an effort to stave off any additional destruction.

Project Barley has experienced light flooding before but "this is the first time where you are wading in water when you open the doors in the morning," Smith said.

But like the Slip, when the tide recedes and the bar is cleaned and dried, business continues as usual. Smith and his partners are even offering $1 off beers this week, given the flooding, and are maintaining plans for Halloween costume contests, "The Voice" auditions and live music.

Nearby restaurant and market Quality Seafood said it actually saw an increase in sales when compared to last Tuesday, crediting the curious onlookers who've come to the pier and the boardwalk to investigate the flooding themselves.

The seafood stalwart — a Redondo Beach staple since 1953 — is outfitted to withstand small amounts of water, given its live-seafood tanks. Manager Adam Hurley, who witnessed the flooding, likened it to a bathtub gradually filling up with water, as opposed to some of the more violent wave thrashings seen in Laguna Beach and Long Beach.

Staff said they were barely flooded with water, but were inundated with calls; customers and generations of fans checked in to see whether the market was OK. General manager Marcia Bamba said they sustained some flooding on Wednesday and expected some on Thursday, but are not overly concerned, even heading into winter.

"Every time we hear 'El Niño' or something like that, we really are the type where until we see it, we'll believe it," she said. "It could rain, it could be snowing and we'll still be open. I've been here for about 29 years, and I've never known this place to close. Not one day."

In Laguna Beach, Lost Pier Cafe's picturesque patio and beachside parking lot experienced powerful waves multiple times in October. This week the parking lot remains closed for repairs, but the cafe is open for business.

Grill 'Em All, the heavy metal-themed Long Beach burger shop with piled-high patties, did have to close on Monday.

Owner Matthew Chernus opened the restaurant on Bayshore Beach in 2023, closing the Alhambra location and centering operations on one end of Long Beach's Alamitos Peninsula. He'd experienced high tides, but May marked the first king tide that affected his business. He downloaded tide apps, readied himself with sandbags and felt prepared for this week's return. But the confluence of the warming oceans with higher water levels and the oversized waves saw the burger joint's patio and dining room filled with ankle-deep water.

"Monday's tide was so enormous," he said. "Even with all those sandbags and tarps and everything else, water finds its way in through a little crack in the glass windows. The floorboards had water trickling under it, and we have a side door that had water coming through. You're finding all these little trickles of water, and you're trying to stop them, but it just keeps coming. It just moves around everything."

He called Monday "a financial setback," but said that even worse were the mental and physical tolls of having to cancel and reschedule expected shifts for his staff, hurting his knees in the process of cleaning and re-securing his restaurant, coming home "covered in mud and sand," and having to recoordinate trash pickups, as the bins were covered in sand that was heavy "like cement."

"Once all the water dried up," Chernus said, "all the real problems started to show their faces."

New, temporary sand berms are helping to stave off the rest of the week's waves, but Chernus said he knows they can't last forever.

Scientists warn that November and December's tides will strengthen again, culminating not only in rough, high seas but also heavy expected rains from El Niño. Restaurants and bars currently flooded are now beginning to plan for potentially worse weather in the ensuing weeks.

"When you talk about the tide yesterday being 6.6 (feet), and then they're talking about mid-November and late November, it could be 8 (feet), we're worried about that," Project Barley's Smith said. He and business partner Brenton Reger are designing new barriers, bracing for the brunt of El Niño.

A manager at the Slip is recommending a renewed focus on to-go and delivery orders to weather the storm-heavy forecast.

At Grill 'Em All, Chernus is going to continue preparing with tarps, sandbags and berms, and crossing his fingers for November and December.

"Honestly, I don't want to go back to where we were on Monday," he said. "I don't want to experience that again, but I have a feeling we will because it's Mother Nature and we can't stop her."

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