Walk the boardwalk past 4445 Admiralty Way on a Friday evening and you'll notice the building before you notice what's missing from it. The dockside patio that used to fill up with a beer-list-heavy crowd most nights of the week is dark. A sign inside references the California Yacht Club, not a restaurant. Down at Fisherman's Village, meanwhile, a WaterBus is still loading passengers for a dollar a ride, and there's live music on the plaza that has nothing to do with tourist season being over. Marina del Rey doesn't slow down evenly this time of year. Some parts of the harbor run on a schedule you can set your watch to. One very visible part has been running behind for over a year.
This Friday Is Probably Your Last WaterBus Ride of the Year
The Marina del Rey WaterBus had its normal Friday, Saturday, Sunday run from June 19 through Labor Day, September 7, with the boat also operating on the Fourth of July. That's the season most residents think of as "WaterBus season," the one where you can hop between Fisherman's Village, Burton Chace Park, Mother's Beach, and five other stops for a dollar cash, no reservation needed.
What a lot of people miss is that the county tacked on a second, shorter run after Labor Day. Fridays from September 4 through September 25, the WaterBus comes back for something called Dance MDR, running evening hours only, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., instead of the full daytime schedule. September 4 landed inside the regular season and ran normal hours, but the two Fridays after that, September 11 and September 18, were bonus nights that most locals probably didn't clock unless they happened to be at the dock. That leaves one more: September 25.
| Dates | Service | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| June 19 – Sept 7, 2026 | Regular season (Fri/Sat/Sun + July 4 + Labor Day) | 11 a.m. – 11 p.m. (9 p.m. Sundays) |
| Sept 11, 18, 25, 2026 | Dance MDR bonus Fridays | 5 p.m. – 11 p.m. |
| Oct 24–25, 2026 | Marina Spooktacular | 2 p.m. – 11 p.m. |
After this Friday, the boat doesn't run again until October 24 and 25, when it comes back for Marina Spooktacular at Burton Chace Park, a two-day Halloween event with activities pitched at younger kids early and scares that pick up after dark. That's a six-week gap where the harbor has no boat service at all, something the county's own event pages make easy to miss if you're only checking one listing at a time.
The Music at Fisherman's Village Didn't Stop When Summer Did
If the WaterBus makes the harbor feel like it's winding down, Fisherman's Village is doing the opposite. On May 30 and 31, the Village opened a new home for the Marina del Rey Historical Society, moving it across the hall within the same Building C space at 13723 Fiji Way, with a bigger gallery that now includes Native American artifacts and a set of framed marina photographs donated by Tony Palermo, the former owner of Tony P's. The ribbon cutting doubled as the launch of the 2026 Summer Music Series, which opened with the Ohio Plus Trio playing the courtyard plaza.
That series didn't end with Labor Day. Free live music kept running on weekends through June, July, and August, and as of this month, Fisherman's Village still has six live music dates on its September calendar, all free, all 2 to 5 p.m. on the waterfront plaza. If you assumed the Village's music program was strictly a summer thing, it isn't. It's one of the more reliable fixtures on the harbor's fall calendar, and it's easy to build a Sunday around: park at the Village, catch a set, walk the boardwalk toward the lighthouse, grab a crepe.
What's Actually Supposed to Be Replacing Tony P's
Here's where the harbor's two clocks stop matching up. Tony P's Dockside Grill closed in July 2025 after nearly three decades in business, when its owners retired and the county took the building back. Just months earlier, in December 2023, the California Yacht Club's own clubhouse next door had been badly damaged in a fire, forcing the club into a temporary pavilion on its parking lot while it planned a permanent rebuild.
In October 2025, the LA County Department of Beaches and Harbors signed a license agreement letting CYC occupy the vacant Tony P's building while the two sides worked toward a longer lease. The plan was a "sea-to-table" restaurant and community gathering space, and county officials said they were aiming for a spring 2026 opening. As Supervisor Holly Mitchell put it at the time, "Tony P's was a cherished part of our Marina del Rey community for decades."
Spring came and went. As of CYC's own February 2026 newsletter to members, the address is still referred to internally as "P-130 (formerly Tony P's)," used for club bar service and event parking, not as a public restaurant. There's no indication the sea-to-table concept has opened its doors to non-members, and the club has been upfront that its actual clubhouse rebuild, separate from this interim restaurant plan, is expected to take several years once designs and permits are finalized. If you've been waiting for a reopening announcement, the honest answer right now is that the building is doing double duty as a private clubhouse annex while a longer process plays out behind it.
It's a useful reminder that not everything on the waterfront moves at the pace of a posted schedule. A few blocks away, filings show a Pita Cafe location planned for 3205 Washington Boulevard, which would be the chain's fifth in the LA area, but as of this writing no opening date has been set for that one either. Small business changes here tend to move on their own timeline, not the county's.
One Reliable Anchor While You Wait
If you want dockside dinner options that aren't in limbo, SALT Restaurant & Bar at the Marina del Rey Hotel on Bali Way has kept a consistent weekly rhythm since its last major renovation, which also introduced the adjoining Del Rey Lounge. Extended happy hour runs Monday through Saturday from 2 to 6:30 p.m., High Tea and Highballs runs Wednesday through Sunday afternoons, Yappy Mondays welcomes dogs on the patio, and live music plays Wednesday through Friday evenings. None of that depends on a lease amendment clearing county review. It's simply been running.
Two Calendars, One Harbor
The pattern underneath all of this is worth sitting with if you live here. The public side of Marina del Rey, the WaterBus, the concert series, the Halloween event at Burton Chace Park, runs on a schedule the county publishes months in advance and mostly keeps. The private side, restaurant leases, redevelopment plans, small business build-outs, moves on a completely different clock, one that can slip by six months or more without much public update. Knowing which calendar you're checking is the difference between catching Friday's last WaterBus ride and wondering, a year from now, why that dockside patio is still dark.
Whether you're weighing a move to the harbor or you've called it home for years, the details that don't make it into the tourist guides are usually the ones that matter most day to day. The Kohl Team has spent years tracking exactly this kind of texture across the Westside, from Marina del Rey to Pacific Palisades, and we're always glad to talk through what's actually happening in a neighborhood before you make a decision based on what a listing photo promises.