MARK McGRATH
b. 1968, raised in Newport Beach
Sugar Ray lead singer, actor, TV host, and grand marshal (with Leslie Mann) of the 2014 Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade
I was 8 when we moved from Connecticut to Newport Beach. When we drove to the airport my mom said, “Why are you so sad, Marcus?” And I said, “Mom, the kids tell me that everybody who goes to California, their parents get divorced.” All I knew, then, about Newport Beach was palm trees and surfing and—prophetically—divorce. That’s what happened to my parents a couple years after moving there. Divorce was part of the fabric of Newport Beach, you know?
Life was truly a paradise growing up in the beach area … riding bikes on the peninsula and going to the Fun Zone, getting a slice at Pizza Pete’s, going down to The Wedge and bodysurfing if there were no waves at Blackies or 56th Street. I ran around the Big Canyon golf course with my buddy, McG, the film director. He and I would run around on skateboards, terrorizing the neighborhoods all over Harbor Hills.
For a whole summer, McG and I would go to the movies every night and we’d sit a seat apart, praying to the lord above that somehow, two beautiful girls would take the seats next to us. It never happened.
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