Musings on the Coast

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Battle of the Beaches 

By Michael Ray
By Michael Ray

I grew up in Corona del Mar and my family had membership in the Balboa Yacht Club where we sailed catboats. My business and non-profit friends tend to reside in Newport. I’ve surfed its shores and played in the vast Irvine Ranch lands where the Pelican Hill Resort resides today.

Now I have lived in Laguna longer than I lived in Newport and I would not go back. People often ask why and what follows is my answer.

Before I start, however, please realize this column is full of sweeping generalizations that obviously will be incorrect for individual circumstances.

First of all, I am not including Newport Coast as part of Newport Beach. It is a disemboweled, if lovely, isolated set of gated homes with no provenance. There is only a core theme of high-income “statement” homes that have exactly one architectural theme. Plus, the inhabitants are mostly new to Newport Beach and not of it, not yet.

I am speaking of CdM, the islands in the bay, the peninsula, and the PCH strip that connects it. It has one unifying focus: keeping up with the Joneses. In this, there is no pretension. It is a flat out goal.

In friendships, it is about social climbing and, yes, I know this is a cliché, but behind every cliché there is a truth. The truth of Newport is that it is an anthill of financial and social posturing with strict rules of behavior.

Politically, country-club conservatives run the joint, and today its City Council is controlled by Tea Party politicos. They take out their fury on the new (gorgeous) Civic Center, which they deem wastefully expensive.

In Laguna, there is no political fury. It is almost boringly cordial.  But let’s start elsewhere.

Laguna has a real downtown and for post-suburban, strip-mall OC, that is a treasure. Even if you do not like the change-nothing crowd that rules downtown, you must admit you really enjoy its multiplicity of restaurants, bars, galleries and shops. There even is a trolley service to get you there; no need for a car.

Then there is the beach. Almost all my Laguna friends are beach freaks.   They surf, SUP, kayak, swim, snorkel, wade, play with their kids and hang out. The ocean defines us in a way a bay never can define a subculture because with the ocean, it is mystical. It is primordial. It is of the heavens and eternity.

At the beach, we know vaguely what the others do for a living, but we do not often discuss work except as specifying it as a necessary evil. Work is not our lives; the beach is. Some of us barely hang on here and live in overpriced tiny apartments. Others are loaded. All are here by choice; we want our ocean-beach, low-key commonality. We embrace it.

Actually, to discuss the “beach” is not entirely accurate, because Laguna is blessed with more than 30 different coves. Collectively, they are more beautiful than anything or any place in the world. Individually, each has its own aura and when we say we go to the beach, we really say we each have a favorite cove and we go to that one.

If you are not a beach freak, you probably are a hiking or mountain biking freak. Thank you, Laguna Beach, for this one, too. In the 1990s you bought the last gigantic piece of virgin land. This links the other open lands and has created a maze of trails stretching hundreds of miles. To afford the purchase, the citizens of Laguna voted to tax themselves sufficiently to pay for it. At about the same time, Newport could have bought a sizable chunk of land overlooking the Back Bay, which would have been an incredible park. Instead, Newport decided short-term “no new taxes” was more important than generations of beauty.

In Laguna, there is little social climbing because we shun it. Your friends are those who share your sense of humor, for me the more absurd the better. And despite how politically correct our ruling bodies have become, we are not a politically correct culture. We are a quixotic culture that is too busy being anti-establishment to hang with the excruciatingly boring politically correct crowd.

Finally, Newport may accept pomposity (you never know which pompous ass might run for president), but in Laguna it is openly ridiculed.

None of this column addresses our local arts and cultural scene, which is hyper-powered for a city this size. Nor can one forget the 500 students at the local arts institute. They flood the city with the talent and energy only young and ambitious people can provide.

So Newport, as much as I love you, and I do, I prefer to quote King Brad, from my local beach, when asked why he prefers Laguna. He gave me a quizzical look, like I was a child, and replied, “Laguna is cool.”

Michael Ray grew up in Corona del Mar and now lives in Laguna Beach.  He makes a living as a real estate entrepreneur and is involved in many non-profits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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