Beach towns are small towns. There’s more under the surface than people see. We were new to Laguna Beach in 2006 when we met Mike the Barista. Work had forced us to relocate and we were plying our despondent kids with hot chocolate; we’d come three days in a row to the same cafe, and the 50-ish Mike had seen all from behind the counter. “The usual?” he smiled, winking kindly. I almost wept, he was so comforting. Read More

Spring is back, feeling, as usual, like a nonstory. When a place is always in the mid-70s and sunny, it’s pretty much never not spring. Read More

Read More

My neighbor Linda has a Mexican fan palm. It is by far the tallest, skinniest, ugliest thing on the block. Also the messiest. The city may trim its trees, but hers aren’t so assiduously tended. So each time the Santa Anas blow, giant dead fronds whirl through the air in every direction. No year is complete without some parked car getting buried in brittle palm branches. What it’s doing in her yard is unclear—she didn’t plant it. It just showed up and began growing. It provides next to no shade and adds next to no value, and one of these days it’ll probably topple and knock a hole in her tile roof. But no amount of pesticide or neglect seems to kill it, and odds are if she chopped it down it would only grow back. So everyone on the block just keeps a broom handy and covers their cars when the winds come. What can we do? The thing wants what it wants. Read More

I used to live in Nixon Country. The first house we owned was in Whittier, where the late president grew up. My husband grew up there, too, in the hills straddling Los Angeles and Orange counties. His Republican parents dragged him at age 9 to a Nixon rally at Whittier College; it was 1960, and they made him wear a little straw boater. The whole town, he recalls, turned out. Read More

Read More

Read More

Read More

Read More

Here at the beach, we rise early, even in summer. Pay no attention to those tourist paintings of hammocks and unmade beds. Dawn breaks to the noise of dogs being walked and lawns being watered, streets being swept and trash being recycled. Read More

One advantage of coastal Orange County is the extra fireworks on the Fourth of July. Every community has a display, each shot out toward the ocean, so from the right perch you can see four or more celebrations in the distance, the rockets’ red glare repeating all along the shoreline.  Read More

Read More