Laguna Beach – “Ouch Point”

As I sit here writing my first beach article, I am feeling the fears and doubts. I’m not a writer, I worry too much about what other people think and the ugly self-talk that tells us that we can’t do it starts to creep in. “STOP” I tell my reptile brain and ask myself why I think these things, and do I know them to be true, and then I choose again and continue to write with abandon. 

It’s been decades since I have written in this style actually. Like so many teenagers struggling to find themselves, I used to journal and of course, there were papers in college but since then, my writing has become corporate—presentations, facts and emails with the guiding principle that brevity is key.

The years have stripped away a bit of my creativity, just like when the ocean breaks on the shore and takes the sand with it as it pulls away.  My creativity has been swallowed up by the ocean of life so it feels good to be launching this project. 

An undercurrent of creativity pulls me in … So here I go.

I chose Laguna Beach to write about first because I have the most memories there as a child and pre-teen “tween” both good and bad. It’s also the place I got married and the place my son proposed to his soon to be wife. When I desired to get a tattoo, I chose to do so in Laguna, because Laguna has meaning and so does my tattoo which is a small cross with the birth flower of each of my sons.

Laguna Beach is located in Southern California 50 miles south of Los Angeles and it’s about 7 miles of coastline with 27-30 coves and beaches. It’s primarily known as an artist community and for its scenic cliffs and coves. It’s a hot spot for divers, photographers, plein air painters, and bohemian hearted hippies!  It’s the home of the Sawdust Festival and Pageant of the Masters.  In fact, there is a beautiful portrait of my mother hanging in her living room that was painted at that festival a year before I was born.

I’m not an entertainment reporter and this isn’t E Online! But it’s worth a shout out to one of my favorite Reality TV show from 2004 called “Laguna Beach” that later spun off to another show called “The Hills”.  These shows launched the career of many of its original cast members.  Especially Kristin Cavallari who we watched grow up from a teenage villain on Laguna Beach to a mom boss CEO of her own company and star of her own reality show.  

Laguna Beach was part of the Rancho San Joaquin Mexican land grant (1837) and it was named Lagona—no, this is not a typo—which is a distortion of the Spanish word “lagoon” after the two lagoons at the head of Laguna Canyon. It was founded in 1887 as Lagonas and it was later renamed to Laguna Beach in 1904.

I will not get in to too much more history about it because there is so much material online.   Especially this great article by Karen Wilson Turnbull who is a local author and historian:

http://www.light-headed.com/asite/laguna/laguna_history/laguna_beach_history.php

And while I won’t get into the history, I do find it fascinating that the early settlers would simply lay claim to beautiful acres of land as their homestead and all they had to do was plant eucalyptus trees!   In the 1850s, these trees were introduced to California by Australians during the Gold Rush.  And since the climate in California is similar to Australia in some parts, these trees were planted with the encouragement of the state government by early settlers claiming land.  Thousands of acres of eucalyptus trees were planted which later created a fire hazard for the state due to over growth and thus started California’s love hate relationship with the Eucalyptus tree.  Here’s a good article for more info: https://www.kqed.org/news/11644927/eucalyptus-how-californias-most-hated-tree-took-root-2

So, if I had to describe Laguna’s beach culture in one word, it would be “art”.

Life Stories: 

What does Laguna Beach mean to me? It means Freedom. Cleansing. A catharsis of sorts. It’s a place where I processed many thoughts. Some thoughts painful, some thoughts joyous. Some ugly and some as beautiful as the light on the water during sunset. All the thoughts that come with the growing pains of a typical young girl  in Southern California and a young girl that belonged but didn’t belong. 

What do I mean by that? Being born in Chile and immigrating to the United States as a very young age (3 years old), I had to find and learn my place and identity. We moved around a lot from Los Angeles to Mission Viejo to Georgia. And then returning to California from Georgia when I was 10 years old for a transient stint in Eagle Rock with our compadres until my father decided to settle us back in to Glendora, CA which would become our permanent home.  

The Chileans viewed me as a “gringa” and the Americans viewed me as “Hispanic”, but I wasn’t really either, yet I was a combination of both!  So after walking more than half of my life time on this earth, I simply call myself a Californian with proud roots to Chile and other places that my ancestors originated from. 

Keep in mind that although I grew up in Southern California, I did not grow up by the beach. Far from it actually. I was considered a “Valley Girl”— albeit the wrong Valley. Glendora is a bedroom community which is at least an hour from the beach on a good day when there’s no traffic on the packed California freeways.  However, believe it or not Glendora has a beach culture.  Did you know “The Surfaris”, who recorded the famous song “Wipe Out” in 1963, was formed in Glendora?  It’s true, check out their bio at https://www.thesurfaris.com/bio!  I should also mention the Balboa Beach Company t-shirts and checkered Vans slip ons that were somewhat of a uniform at Goddard Jr. High.

Anyway, the distance did not stop my family from making the drive in our station wagon every Sunday to Laguna Beach to spend the entire day and evening at the north end of Shaw’s cove. What were those drives like?  Long and hot because we didn’t have air conditioning in the car, but as we sat in the back rear facing seat, my sister and I entertained ourselves with games such as “out of state” and teasing strangers and passerby’s by making funny faces pressed against the car windows.  Remember, there were no smart phones back then.  My dad would then drop us off at the top of the park and we would haul all of our beach gear down the cliff to claim our place in the sand while he spent the next hour finding a parking spot. 

We (my parents, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, etc) spent the entire day hanging out on the beach, sunbathing, body surfing, napping, reading, burying each other in the sand, etc. until it was time to haul everything back up the hill to the picnic area.  We would spend the rest of the evening barbequing and exploring Heisler park until it was time to make the long drive home. By then, we were sunburned, exhausted and dreading the fact that it was very late, and Monday was a school day. I think this is where I developed my disdain of Mondays!

So, these days sound great, don’t they? Well not always. They are fun until you started to become an angry, hormonal teenager. Why was I so angry you ask? Well that’s a post for another day, but for now let’s talk about beach life.

Body surfing is what I remember most because I ate sh*t in the ocean plenty of times, swallowing what felt like gallons of ocean water and not knowing if I would make it up for air after getting caught up in the breaking waves. Over time, I learned how to dive under them and swim out beyond the breaking point and just float out there gazing back to the shoreline at all the beach goers until I was too fatigued and had to swim back. Later on, when I was home in bed, I would fall asleep with the sensation of the waves rolling over me even though hours had passed. 

One Sunday, I noticed a local girl running down the beach diving in and out of the water like a beautiful gazelle like sea creature. Her sun-kissed skin and beachy highlighted blond hair is what lead to me to laying out in my backyard with baby oil and lemon in my hair in 100+ valley heat with no breeze. I so wanted to be that gorgeous creature and I often wonder what became of her life. I admired how she could just pop on to the beach, take a dip in the ocean then go back home anytime she desired and didn’t have to drive hours to get there nor haul gear up and down the cliffs. The girls from the Laguna Beach reality TV show reminded me of “gazelle” which is why I think I was so drawn to watching it.

Does anyone remember the bikini bathing suits with the criss cross ties from the ‘80s? Well “gazelle” sported one of those too, and I wanted one so badly that I made extensions for the straps on my bathing suit so I could tie it around my body just like she did. However, the extensions didn’t quite line up nor did my body look like her’s, but it sure gave me the illusion of it!

Laguna’s ocean and beaches are interesting because they are coves and the area of sand is narrow, the water gets deep fast and the waves crash close to the shore.   When the tide is high, there is less sand to sit on as well so we would have to move our towels and chairs back closer to the cliff. So, to swim out past the waves, you had to time the set just right and do it fast. This is where I learned to swim in the ocean (eventually) and respect it.

By the end of the day, I did not enjoy trying to wash off the large quantities of sand in my suit and change in to clean dry clothes in the public restroom…or did I? I did really like the feeling of getting in to dry clothes after a long day on the beach even if I still had the film of salty ocean water left on my skin. However, I didn’t mind the sand on my feet and between my toes and to this day it’s something I still enjoy… digging my toes in the sand.

So, once we were all dry and while my parents barbequed our dinner, we would take a walk through Heisler park down to the gazebo by the Las Brisas restaurant.   One Sunday when I was about 12 years old, I saw a wedding taking place in the gazebo and I stood and watched admiring the beautiful bride. I remembered this 22 years later when I was looking for a venue for my own wedding. My son proposed to his bride to be in the gazebo in January this year while both families watched from the patio of the Las Brisas.

And now we get to the story of why it’s also called “Ouch Point”. By the time I was 13, my parents allowed me to bring a friend on those Sundays. Probably because they were sick of listening to me bitch and complain about everything and asking when we were going home. So, I invited my BFF Bonnie. She and I would take that evening stroll down to the gazebo and spy on the Hare Krishnas on the main beach. What ever happened to them? Actually, I do know the answer to that and you can read more about it here:  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-17-me-985-story.html

Anyway, on one sunny Sunday evening, we noticed a photographer standing in the gazebo shooting something or someone below on the cliff, so we decided to have a peak. It happened to be a male model.  So, like the silly teenagers that we were, we decided to hide in the bushes and do some cat calling…. “ooooo, oooooo” we yelled out. But when the photographer spotted us, we locked eyes with him and started yelling “ooouch, oouch, my foot, I stepped on something”!! For dramatic affect we started grabbing at our feet, all the while giggling.  You know the sort of giggling that makes your belly sore a few days later like you’ve done 100 sit ups?!  So, from that point forward, the gazebo was known to us as “Ouch Point”. 

Now fast forward to 2020… we are facing unprecedented times with a global pandemic and safer at home orders that began three months ago.  But, I am so grateful and honored to be able to sit in my beautiful backyard on a Sunday afternoon listening to the birds chirp and the wind chimes dance with a birds eye view of the ocean writing this blog post thinking about a simpler time when there were no smart phones and all I had to do was spend an afternoon with my toes in the beach.

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