(photo by Chris Erskine)

Many evenings, the Santa Monica Pier seems the only thing in Los Angeles not made of laminate or facial fillers.

Honestly, the pier seems made of repurposed pirate ships.

When the sun hits, the heavy old planks smell like Grandpa’s wood shop. There’s an aura to it, a baked-on allure. It’s also Route 66’s earthy exclamation point.

The pier is always changing yet largely rooted in past pleasures – much like Route 66 itself. It claims lineage to the Mother Road of course, one of its most-photographed stops.

The pier is the end-game reward for your dusty journey. You can somersault into its waves – a benediction, a christening – and wash away the grit and milkshake stains from your long trip across the Mojave (or even down Santa Monica Boulevard).

I ask you: Is there a more-American highway? And is there a more-American pier than this dank and gnarly old thing, on the nation’s far, far, far, farthest lobe?

Keep Coney Island, or even Paris. I’ll take Santa Monica Bay any day.

The name Bob Waldmire ring a bell? He was the scruffy king of Route 66, a bird’s-eye artist and cartographer credited with reviving interest in the route after the interstate kidnapped millions of visitors.

A leftover desert hippie, Waldmire ran a famed souvenir shop in Arizona, the Hackberry General Store. His 1972 Volkswagen bus inspired “Fillmore” in the movie “Cars.” In 2004, five years before his death, Waldmire won the John Steinbeck Award for his contributions to the old highway.

Today, the late artist lives on in his kitschy artwork on display at the end of the pier, the maps and drawings appropriately weather-worn, just like the highway itself.

It seems the perfect blip of Americana, an ode to the nation’s inevitable westward tilt, a hint that – for some travelers – this pier was more a beginning than an end.

That this ancient pier still stands is a bit of a wonder. In the 1970s, that college of clowns (the Santa Monica City Council) voted to demolish the sagging attraction. Fortunately, activists found a way to save it. Today, more than a century after it was built, the pier remains vibrant.

Remarkably, they haven’t instituted some sort of admission fee. But I’m OK with that. Santa Monica Pier remains the only fair deal in this hyper-priced city.

Think of it as L.A.’s finest IMAX, with a 25-mile wrap-around screen and 2,000mm projection. Seabirds, thongs, lifeguard towers, dolphins, musclemen, acrobats, all soft-focused and sublime. Even the vagabonds have a burnished glow.

That big multi-colored hamster wheel, visible from way up the coast? Feels like it will launch you and your date out into the waves.

The Santa Monica Pier debuted on September 9, 1909, but the Ferris Wheel didn’t come along until 1996. It was replaced in 2008 with its current model. (photo by Tabor Brewster)

Meanwhile, Japadog is the best hotdog you will ever have outside Chicago (look for the cart midway down the dock).

There’s also the gilded carousel at the entrance, built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Co., the same ride that Paul Newman operated in “The Sting,” and the carousel Robert Redford likely rode as a kid growing up here.

Me, I like the buskers best, for if anyone represents Los Angeles’ role in the world, it’s aspiring street performers.

On this Indian summer evening, the dude with the boombox sounds better than anything I’ve heard lately on TikTok or TV. He smiles like a sunset when I drop a fiver in the bucket.

Capitalism should always be this immediate.

Someday, I’d love to produce a reality show about the buskers of Santa Monica Pier. I want to hear the performers’ backstories. I want to start it here at the pier, then shoot the finale at The Greek or the Hollywood Bowl.

I want to make a talented person’s dreams come true. I want to find the next Ed Sheeran or Tracy Chapman, who both got started playing the streets.

But I digress, probably because the pier leads to wistfulness and reflection, my two favorite character quirks.

Obviously, the place has star power galore, starting with Charlie Chaplin’s slapstick in 1914. Scenes from “Forrest Gump” were shot here . . . “Titanic,” “Iron Man,” “Barbie.”

Sign of the times: It’s now a location for popular video games, including the “Grand Theft Auto” series.

You can look a long way before finding so many postcard moments. In fact, there might be more memories made here at the pier than anyplace besides Dodger Stadium.

Imagine all the marriage proposals here over the years – the family escapades, the illicit rendezvous, the giggles, the first kisses, the birthdays. There is no better place for landlubbers to appreciate the rolling sea, or the way the sun kisses the glistening sand at bedtime.

Sure, the parking blows and it’s shamelessly touristy. But plow through that (I prefer the big lots south of the pier).

Then go ahead, splurge on ice cream, eat your weight in fried shrimp.

Chat up the anglers hunting for barracuda, sand bass, white croaker. Occasionally, they hook a shark.

A rising tide lifts everyone, as they say. A rising roller-coaster is pretty fun too.

You mean there’s still photo booths in this day and age? Here there is. You can also get your name engraved on a grain of rice, goof around in the arcade, have an icy margarita and toast Japan. FYI, it’s out there somewhere behind the setting sun, a hundred horizons away.

These days, I take the grandkids. Honestly, I’d rather lose a tooth than deal with Disneyland anymore. I’d rather badgers eat my eyeballs than try to figure out the fast-passes and the convoluted ticket process.

At the pier, you just show up – how rare is that anymore?

Once here, you’ll celebrate an attraction that remains lively and spontaneous well into old age – charred by the sun, cooled by L.A.’s billion-dollar breezes.

Long live this splintered old pitstop, barnacles and all.