NAKED
Nude Bathing at San Onofre
There's a tendency to think of nude beaches—or, for that matter, nude campgrounds and nude lumber yards—in terms of naked Brad Pitts and Jennifer Garners dangling about. In actuality, we all look much more like, well, disgusting meat sacks. So, remember the sunscreen and that people come in all shapes and sizes when you pack for San Onofre State Beach. Take the Basilone Road exit off the 5 and head toward the state beach. There's nude sunbathing 300 yards south of Trail 6. You know you're there when you see men in jogging shorts carrying the smallest duffle bags ever made. www.beachesbeaches.com.
STROKE!
Roller Skating
The '80s are back in a big way—asymmetrical hair, Depeche Mode, DeLoreans—so why not relive them at the skating rink? I doubt they still play Billy Squier's “The Stroke,” but there just has to be a dark corner somewhere, and that means you can French kiss and fondle just like in the good old days. Get your Hokey Pokey on at the Fountain Valley Skating Center, equipped with an old-fashioned wooden rink, plenty of disco/flashy lights and a few pairs of Angel Flights pants—well, we can dream, can't we? Stroke! Stroke!Adult skate nights are Thursday and Sunday. 9105 Recreation Circle, Fountain Valley, (714) 847-6300; www.fv-skate.com.
WASTED SEX
The Pearl Dust Martini
With no apparent concern for, say, overpopulation—or the awful morning after—the folks at La Cave have introduced the Pearl Dust Martini, a giant, $18 glassful of Level vodka and Bianco vermouth topped with a lemon twist and a dollop of pearl dust. The allegedly potent aphrodisiac, made from finely crushed pearls, is rumored to have been Cleopatra's weapon of choice, although La Cave's staffers are mum over how much dust is required for wall-humping randiness to take hold. In the interest of science—and science alone, ma!—we tried one a few weeks back. Despite the pearl dust itself tasting like finely crushed pearls, the martini was delicious. Afterward, we went home with the bartender. Kidding! But our naughty bits did feel a bit tingly. Kind of like how we feel after drinking copious amounts of alcohol. La Cave Restaurant, 1695 Irvine Ave., Costa Mesa, (949) 646-7944.
JUST WASTED
Home Entertainment
I'm no advocate of drugs, but if I were you, I'd score a big pile of drugs, rent Grease, and put on Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Mute the movie and start the album just as Paramount Mountain appears; proceed to smoke, snort and Bogart your drugs until your consciousness is like a peachy-keen jellybean; then, enjoy the spoils of a true film-album synchronization—or at least one that's far better than yesterday's tired “Dark Side of the Rainbow” screenings. Personally, I discovered the pairing after much patience, meticulous guesswork and a steady supply of marijuana. Sure, I'd taken a few wrong turns—trying for hours to align Spielberg's slave epic Amistad with Mary-Kate and Ashley's Brother for Sale—but in the end, I popped in Grease and Wish You were Here and realized I'd stumbled onto the kind of stuff lesser religions are made of.
PUMP DA BASE
Angels Baseball
What would summer be without baseball? Plenty, actually; still, the June through August months with Your Anaheim Angels look like something to salivate over. Along with the usual American League West suspects visiting OC this summer, like the A's, Mariners and surprising Rangers, we'll also see a July Fourth weekend homestand vs. the stupid fucking Dodgers that probably sold out eons ago. The inter-league games are a bit of a bust, though—while we're drooling over the Cubs' three-game series June 11 through 13, the Brewers arrive just before that, and we're old enough to remember when the Brewers were still in the AL and played the Angels all the time—like in the 1982 ALCS, but we really don't want to bring that up. Best giveaways: Troy Glaus and Bartolo Colon matryoshka dolls!
READ RICHARD YATES
There's been plenty of great writing on the subject of the American suburb—the honor roll takes us from John Cheever (“The Country Husband,” “The Swimmer,” “O Youth and Beauty!”) and John Updike (the Rabbit tetralogy); through Ann Beattie (The Burning House), Richard Ford (Independence Day) and Andre DuBus (Adultery and Other Choices); and on to Gen. X inheritors such as A.H. Homes (The Safety of Objects), Rick Moody (The Ice Storm, Purple America) and Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides). And we shouldn't forget films like American Beauty and Blue Velvet, or the spookily radiant paintings of Eric Fischl. There's a summer syllabus for you right there.
But the work we most certainly shouldn't forget when we're talking about the suburbs—and it's work that all but a few have forgotten until recently—is that of Richard Yates, whose Revolutionary Road is, I think, the most beautifully written and most devastating novel ever about a way of life that more than half of America calls normal.
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It's a way of life that Yates represents (with a tenderness he learned from his two great forbears, J.D. Salinger and F. Scott Fitzgerald) as a social system of fatal compromise: in exchange for the sordid boons of getting and spending, security and acceptance, suburbanites crush whatever dreams fall outside an extraordinarily narrow range of acceptability, find themselves pursuing their strangled desires in secret, utterly confuse themselves with the roles they play and, like Kierkegaard's modern man, hide their hearts so far from themselves they wake up one morning to find themselves dead.
Yates himself lived an utterly miserable life. That's clear from Blake Bailey's wrenching 2003 biography, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, which, along with reissues of Yates' books (with new introductions by Richard Ford and Richard Russo), is fueling renewed interest in his work. A three-pack-a-day smoker since his high school years, a man who could easily put down a quart of whiskey or guzzle three six-packs in a steady day's drinking, traumatized by his combat experiences in World War II, Yates was clinically manic-depressive, and the medications he took, when combined with his alcohol addiction, led to countless psychotic breakdowns and lengthy stays in psychiatric hospitals.
To compound his misery, Yates was a straight, Flaubertian realist and wrote in the teeth of a literary culture so absorbed by John Barth's metafiction or Thomas Pynchon's dazzling postmodern dislocations that, by comparison, Yates' traditionalism seemed irrelevant and old-hat. All this clearly took a toll on Yates—some of his later writing is painfully inferior to Revolutionary Road—but it's miraculous that he was as productive as he was: seven novels, as well as two collections of stories, one, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, an absolute classic.
Revolutionary Road is one for the ages. It's about the Wheelers, Frank and April, two smart, promising New Yorkers who get swept up in the grand arc of American postwar accommodationism: man gets woman pregnant, they marry, man takes boring corporate job, man and wife buy house in the suburbs, woman stays home with the children, everybody's mysteriously miserable. What makes Yates' take on this suburbs unique—aside from his stunning craft (whole other essay needed here)—is that Frank and April realize they've compromised, feel superior to their own lives and, out of a finally acknowledged desperation, vow to change everything. They decide to quit the job, sell the house and move to Paris. “Freedom”—to which concept no one gives more lip service than suburbanites—beckons. But freedom, real freedom—where you live without the safety net of social acceptance, where one is forced to stand face-to-face against your own hopes for yourself—turns out to be so terrifying for them that it turns humiliating and finally tragic. Kurt Vonnegut called the novel “The Great Gatsby of my time,” and I can see why: it has the American dream, its seductive hope, its “meretricious beauty,” its mournful consequences nailed. (Cornel Bonca) SHAKESPEARE'D Theater Shakespeare Orange County will perform two plays this summer—and neither is A Midsummer Night's Dream! Much Ado About Nothing plays July 15 through 31 and Macbeth plays August 5 through 21. Village Green Amphitheatre, 12740 Main St., Garden Grove, (714) 744-7016; www1.chapman.edu/comm/td/soc/index2.html. CRYSTAL COVE STATE PARK Hiking Stretching from Coronal del Mar to Laguna Beach, this beach is a favorite of runners and others looking to enjoy the beautiful coastline and cooling ocean breezes. During low tides, spectacular pools are revealed, home to a plethora of interesting ocean denizens, including crabs, starfish and sea urchins. Nearby, once-pristine hills have been defiled by multimillion-dollar homes that now blanket the slopes; however, once on the beach and sheltered by steep bluffs, you are immune to this blight. 8471 Pacific Coast Hwy., Laguna Beach, (949) 497-7647. MUSIC LIBRARY Outdoor Music The San Juan Capistrano Regional Public Library offers outdoor concerts in the courtyard once a month May through October. Two shows (7 and 9 p.m.), intimate seating, eclectic world music—African drummers to Irish folk to Spanish flamenco—and an appreciative audience makes for a worldly night out. 31495 El Camino Real, San Juan Capistrano, (949) 248-7469; www.musicatthelibrary.com. SURFER BOYS U.S. Open The U.S. Open of Surfing, the biggest surf contest in North America, takes place July 24 to Aug. 1 in Huntington Beach. Top professionals from around the world come to compete and check out the culture of Southern California . . . checking, still checking. . . . Anyway, there's a good chance surfers like current world champion Andy Irons and everyone's favorite boy next door Kelly Slater will be on the beach. It's guys like this who attract Orange County's finest females. Girls in teeny-tiny bikinis sporting just-bought boobs and bleached-blond hair, and all they want is a hot surfer boy. You surf . . . right? www.usopenofsurfing.com. DIRT, TREES, HILLS, STUFF Most of us take the Santa Ana Mountains for granted. Not as lofty as the nearby San Gabriel, San Bernardino or San Jacinto mountains, few realize the variety this mountain oasis has to offer: sweeping chaparral-covered slopes, bubbling streams, riparian woodland, potreros carpeted with colorful wildflowers, massive rock formations, and, higher up, stands of Douglas fir and Coulter pine. While navigating its trails, you can almost forget strip malls are just a few miles distant. Stand atop one of its peaks, however, and it's clear these mountains truly are an island in a sea of development. With housing tracts gnawing at its edges like Pac-Men and numerous proposals for more ambitious development—from reservoirs in Morrell Canyon to plans for a road over or under the mountain's spine—it might be prudent to get out there before the trails are converted to asphalt and the chaparral to manicured, water-hungry lawns. When you do, get an early start. The summer sun can really heat things up, and by late morning on calm, hot days, the flies can become a major nuisance. There are numerous trails in the Santa Ana Mountains, providing possibilities for hiking, trail running or mountain biking. Here are a couple of options: Harding Truck Trail. From the trailhead, a 9.3-mile climb leads to the intersection with the Main Divide. You can turn around here or climb another 4.5 miles to Santiago Peak. A killer descent is a well-earned reward for the uphill grunt. Park at the Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary on Modjeska Canyon Rd., two miles from the intersection with Santiago Canyon Rd. Santiago Peak via Holy Jim Trail. It's 16.1 miles roundtrip, with 4,000 feet elevation gain. Follow Holy Jim Canyon Road half a mile to the trailhead, and then four and a half miles to Main Divide Truck Trail (3S04). Go left; another three miles, and you'll reach the summit. Park at the intersection of Trabuco Creek and Holy Jim Canyon rds. in Trabuco Canyon (4.7 miles from the intersection with Live Oak Canyon). Trabuco Creek Rd. is a rough dirt road. West Horsethief and Trabuco Trail Loop. A 10.5-mile loop with 2,500 feet elevation gain, the single-track trail begins at the end of Trabuco Creek Road. Go left at 1.7 miles on West Horsethief Trail, right at 4.5 miles on Main Divide Truck Trail and right at 5.8 miles on Trabuco Trail, which leads back to the trailhead. Parking area is one mile past the intersection of Trabuco Creek and Holy Jim Canyon rds. (see above). San Juan Trail. The trail begins in Hot Springs Canyon and stretches for 11.9 miles before dumping into Blue Jay Campground, near the summit of Ortega Highway. Park near the trailhead on Hot Springs Canyon Rd., one-half mile from the intersection with Ortega Hwy. (near the San Juan Fire Station). Bear Canyon Trail to Sitton Peak. Take the Bear Canyon Trail south from the Ortega Oaks Store. After one mile, go right at the intersection with Morgan Trail. At Four Corners, take the trail furthest to the right, then climb to the saddle below Sitton Peak. From there, ascend the east slope to the peak. Park in the San Juan Loop Trail parking area, across Ortega Hwy. from the Ortega Oaks Store (0.7 miles north of Upper San Juan Campground). Note: bicycles are not allowed in the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness (essentially, trails east of Ortega Hwy.). You'll have to hike or run this route. GONDOLA'D Romance in Newport Harbor For the hopeless romantics—that is to say, for the hopeless—several companies offer gondola rides through the canals of Newport Harbor. It's a wonderful way to spend a warm summer evening with someone you love, someone you'd like to get to love, or someone you'd just like to make very uncomfortable, say, your youth minister. I've cruised the canals in Venice, and they are dark and dirty, so you'll have to throw your trash overboard if you really want to feel like you are in Italy. . . . But don't! Did I mention you get a free salami? Awwww, yeaaaah! Gondola Co. of Newport Beach, www.gondolas.com; Romantic Gondola Cruises, www.gondola.com. SURFER GIRLS Museum Field Trip This summer's exhibit at the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum is titled “Women Who Surf” and features artifacts and memorabilia spanning the history of women's surfing—from premissionary Hawaii to Layne Beachley's record-setting six world titles. The exhibit's dedicated to the late Rell Sunn, who in surfing circles is something of a saint, known not only for her skills on a board but also her activism and generous spirit. The “Queen of Makaha,” who died in 1998 from breast cancer, is a Hawaiian icon and was instrumental in establishing the Women's Professional Surfing Association and founding the women's pro surfing tour. She once explained that thing surfers call the aloha spirit thusly: “You give and you give and you give . . . and you give from here”—she meant her heart—”until you have nothing else to give.” Aloha, Rell. 411 Olive Ave., Huntington Beach, (714) 960-3483. MORO CANYON Mountain Bike An extension of Crystal Cove State Park, this canyon slices inland from the coast and abuts the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park on its eastern end. Although the new homes now crowd what the Irvine Co. claims is “California's most envied hills,” the park's integrity is secure. Trails named Mach One, Elevator, Toads and I Think I Can invite users to challenge their challenging aspects. 20101 Laguna Canyon Rd., Laguna Beach, (949) 494-9352. CELEBRATE SURF, SUN AND FAMILY FUN Ocean Festival The San Clemente Ocean Festival runs July 17 and 18 on and around the San Clemente pier. This two-day event features stuff to look at (an ocean art show, sand sculpture competition, longboard and tandem surf competitions), stuff to eat (lifeguard pancake breakfast) and stuff to do (bodyboarding and bodysurfing clinics). So go do it all, and, word to the wise, don't be disappointed when you find out the festival's promised show of “woodies” is not exactly what you had in mind. Embarrassing. www.oceanfestival.org. GETTING INKY WIT IT Tattoos The Rock of Ages Tattoo Festival, held Aug. 15 to 17 in Orange, features tattoo artists from New York to Texas to Japan. There is also a hot-rod car show, vintage motorcycle show and live concerts throughout the three-day show. The crowd will be colorful, to say the least. www.rockofagestattoofestival.com. IRIE/IRISH Queen Mary Music The Queen Mary Park in Long Beach will hosts two great music festivals this summer. Get irie on July 11 at the Seventh Annual Caribbean Seabreeze Festival, featuring Buju Banton, Glen Washington, Pupa Curly and more. Then get your Irish (or is it Scottish) jig on at the Celtic Music Festival by the sea on Aug. 14. Artists include Wolfstone, Gaelic Storm, the Wicked Tinkers and more. Caribbean Seabreeze Festival, www.seabreezefest.com; Celtic Music Festival, www.longbeachcelticfestical.com. POKER Poker Every July or August, I host a poker tournament in my back yard. I'm a Texas Hold 'Em-playing (also Fiery Cross, Fiery Cock, Crazy Pineapple, Night Baseball), T-shirt-wearing member of the United Poker Players of Long Beach, unrepentantly “bankrupt and drunk since 1999.” It's an informal group: tattooed punks, a nurse, construction workers, an artist, a lone paralegal. Turnout at games varies, but there are more rules than in Emily Post. Poker etiquette is a good thing 'cause you don't want someone calling a hand they don't have or betting out of turn. Did I say betting? We play for peanuts—Circus Peanuts, actually: those orangey, marshmallow candies you find at the market. You can't really join the UPPLB; you have to know somebody to get in, which isn't difficult if you visit Fern's Bar or the Red Room, both in Long Beach. www.upplb.com. TIKI Buying Stuff House of Tiki bridges the gap between people like veteran tiki carver Bosco of Whittier, who makes giant tiki gods from things such as dead palm trees, and the local Hallmark store, which will sell you everything Shag—greeting cards, stickers—until you just wanna roll over and die. With an excellent supply of all things exotica, from prints and paper ephemera to hand-carved idols to mugs, swizzle sticks and barware, House of Tiki will let you get your Polynesian on. 1860 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa, (949) 642-8454. DRAG Horse Racing Since 1951, people have come from miles around to watch—and bet on—the equine equivalent of drag racing: quarter horse racing at Los Alamitos Race Course. In feel and temperament, it is much closer to the Old West than such tony tracks as Santa Anita that try for that Old English feel. Los Al is filled with regular folk who watch their mortgage payment trail the pack while downing the track brew, which packs a wallop. Sure, it's not always what you would call spic-and-span, and yeah, there always seems to come a point in the evening when someone throws up in a trash can. But hey, it's a racetrack; you're betting hard-earned money on an animal that poops while walking. At Los Al, races are decided in, like, 20 seconds. Quarter horses are built for terrific short bursts of speed—none of this running around. 4961 Katella Ave., Los Alamitos, (714) 995-1234.
