Me Drive Crazy
My wife Nancy used to think the task of piloting a sail boat through a crowded harbor was the most stressful thing she could do. What with no brakes, no traffic lanes or marked intersections and an abundance of drunken confusion. That was until she moved to Laguna Beach and drove to the grocery store for the first time.
Everybody that has been in Laguna long enough has a secret short cut or some special parking hustle. Everybody. Sooner or later we all adapt in one-way or the other.
What’s your secret thing? If you don’t want to share we’ll understand. Here are a couple of favorites worth sharing.
These directions could get you out the canyon during the rush. Maybe gaining six or seven car lengths. Which is lot when you consider the death defying moves people do for just one. Or they could get you a ticket. One thing for sure is you won’t be the only one doing it.
Mermaid to Second, then go across across Forest and through the Pepper Tree Parking Lot where you have to swim upstream on Ocean to the hardscape mall parking lot. Go through it and out Broadway to a right on Forest. Right away turn left into the parking lot going all the way to the end and enter Canyon Road. Turn on the frontage road and follow it all the way to Woodland Driver where you re-enter the flow out the canyon several car lengths ahead of those that stuck with the street.
South Laguna has a mystery street, which could reduce traffic if more people used it. It’s a one-way dead end street. Where do they all go?
Parking can be more challenging than driving. Saving a spot is our number one goal. The store-bought sign like one with the cop on it telling you “don’t even think of parking here” is a rookie move that usually doesn’t work. We’re at a higher level here. We’ll buy a motor scooter or golf kart to leave it in the spot we’re saving.
Or maybe get the fake handicapped parking sign, construction cones or, better yet, official looking Private Street signs that we post at both ends on our block of a public street.
There was a yellow traffic sign on our street that advised, “No construction traffic before 7 a.m.” This beauty was so effective that the police wrote tickets for violations of it. It lasted for years until a neighbor asked the city how they could get one for their street. They couldn’t. It wasn’t real.
JJ Gasparotti moved to Laguna Beach with his family when he was 11. He has loved it ever since.
