RAGIN’ : Youths Swarm to Newport to Celebrate Summertime by Partying on the Peninsula

The time to be on Seashore Drive in Newport Beach, says Mike Thiedemann, “is when it’s ragin’.”

It was Saturday night, and Thiedemann, a 21-year-old aficionado of Seashore Drive night life, was resting on his skateboard at Seashore and 36th Street. He and three friends had been cruising on their boards between 45th Street and 34th Street for most of the night, dodging traffic and yelling hello to any girls who looked under 30.

It was not a first-rate party night, according to Thiedemann, a local. “Aw, it’s OK. But it’s not ragin’. You should have been here two weeks ago. Or the Fourth of July. Now that was a rage.”

His friends piped in their agreement.

“Raging” means parties. Crowds of young people in the street. Lots of hoopla, loud music and plenty of beer. It’s the kind of night life that appeals to many young people, but disturbs many other people in Newport Beach. They include both permanent residents and some adults who vacation in the city’s beach area in the summer and don’t like the party atmosphere that often goes with it.

Council Drafting Ordinance

The Newport Beach City Council, beset with complaints, is doing something about them. It’s drafting an ordinance that would let the police issue misdemeanor citations to people in “party” houses following a first-time warning that someone has complained about them. Several such warning letters have been sent out in recent weeks, most of them to houses where the renters change week to week during the summer months.

The targeted area is on the Balboa Peninsula: Seashore Drive from 45th to 34th, including side streets stretching a block to Balboa Boulevard. The area is jammed with houses, many of them filled with young people who rent them out a week at a time for summer partying.

In July, Newport Beach police instituted a “Cruise Control” to clamp down on the carloads of teen-agers--many of them drinking and driving--who clog Peninsula streets on summer nights.

Last Saturday night may have been tame to Thiedemann and his friends, but the traffic on the narrow sand-spotted street just a few yards from the beach was a steady mix of cars, bicycles, motor scooters, skateboards and pedestrians who did not want to be crowded onto the sidewalk. Every few minutes a Newport Beach police car was squeezed into the motley parade.

Taking it all in were Deanna Munson and Karin Cousino, two 12-year-old Arcadia girls resting on pillows as they leaned out the second-story window of a four-bedroom house Deanna’s parents had rented for the week.

“It’s great,” Deanna said. “We go to the beach all day, and at night we watch the action on the street.”

But the girls agreed that neighbors who complained about the rowdyism had a good point.

“Some kids do get carried away,” Karin said. “It’s usually the ones here without their parents.”

The young party people on the Balboa Peninsula are divided into two types. The locals, or “locs”--the youngsters who live in the area year-round are one type; the “weeklies”--those who rent a house for a week or two--are the second.

Newport Beach Police Officer Howard Eisenberg describes the weeklies like this: “You start off with a dozen people who invite a dozen friends, and they invite a dozen more, and then you’re dealing with an uncontrollable situation.”

Many on the street Saturday night considered that assessment an exaggeration. Some are not so sure.

“The problem is usually at the end of the week, when everybody trashes the house and just leaves,” said 17-year-old Shane Allor of Glendora, an annual visitor now staying with a friend who is a local. “There is lots of drinking going on. Maybe some drugs. But a lot of beer.”

You don’t have to be a weekly to cause complaints from neighbors.

Kelly Gallaher, a 25-year-old sales executive who was born and raised in Newport Beach, was throwing a birthday party for a friend in the front yard of her Seashore Drive home Saturday night. A few weeks ago, she said, a neighbor across the street threatened police action over one of her parties.

A lot of the complainers, she said, are the older weeklies who can’t seem to adjust to the Balboa Peninsula party atmosphere.

“Four months out of the year this place is chaotic,” she said. “But it’s a resort area, and people who come here should realize that.”

Dr. Peter Kennedy of San Marino and his wife Anne have been coming to the Seashore Drive area for eight years. In that time they’ve learned a few things: For one, they have found the partying less rowdy farther away from the Newport Beach pier. Also, they’ve learned not to stay in corner houses.

“Most of the outdoor partying is on the street corners,” Peter Kennedy said.

Despite some noise annoyances over the years, the Kennedys actually find they like being around the young people.

“Really, the kids aren’t that bad,” Peter Kennedy said. “And it’s not just kids making the noise anyway.”

Peter Kennedy doesn’t believe that Newport Beach officials will react so strongly that they deter weekly tourists from coming.

“It’s an industry,” he said. “People rent their houses out for $800 to $1,500 a week. They know what summers are like. But for that price, they can put up with a little noise.”

Russ Scott and three friends from the Riverside-Corona area have no idea how much it cost for the house they’re renting this week. Scott, who is 18, got the week’s rent from his parents as a birthday present.

The four rode into town Saturday on a pair of Vespa 200 motor scooters and immediately got busy on their vacation agenda. One of them, 18-year-old John Leif described it nonchalantly: “All the guys cruise back and forth. The idea is to find the right chick. ‘Course, you find some of them are stuck up. Those are the Anaheim Hills type.”

A friend they had just met, 15-year-old Aimee Anderson of Santa Ana, agreed that most of the teen-aged girls who came to Newport Beach were there for the same reason. Aimee is staying two weeks with her family. Her main complaint, echoed by many along the Seashore area, is what she sees as unnecessary police harassment.

“I was just sitting here like this (on the back of a car) and a police car came by and a cop asks me if I live here,” she said. “I said ‘yes,’ and he says, ‘Get back in your house.’ ”

Right after she related that story to the four Riverside-Corona boys, another police car stopped next to them.

“You guys live here?” a policeman asked them.

“Yes, sir, we’re here for a week,” said Rick Lapetina, 19.

The officers glanced at all of them, asked a couple more questions, then drove on.

A group of 10 college students who had rented the first floor of a house three doors down from Seashore complained that the high school rowdies made it difficult for the college crowd who were there to relax and gather with friends.

“Ninety percent of the wild bunch are 17 and under, but we still get pegged as part of the high school crowd,” said Carrie Callahan, a 21-year-old USC student from Arcadia. Robert Greep, a 21-year-old University of Kentucky student from Arcadia, said their group worries about complaints from the neighbors because four young women who had rented the first floor a week before had reportedly caused a lot of trouble.

“Those four threw such a wild party that even the tourists throwing a party upstairs moved out,” Greep said. “We’re told the ones upstairs are going to take those girls to small claims court to try to recover the week’s rent they paid.”

Greep and Callahan’s group said they understand why the police have to be so tough, because of such partying. But they claim it unfortunately spills over to them when they are trying to behave themselves.

Callahan told how earlier that night they were confronted by eight police officers who complained that some minors said her group had given them some beer.

“We didn’t realize they were under age, but my God, it took eight police officers to tell us?” she said. The officers left with just a warning.

Two people not so lucky Saturday night were Rick Teskel, 21, and Denise Salazar, 18. They were stopped by four police officers in an unmarked car on 43rd Street a block from Seashore. Teskel was cited for having an open container in a moving vehicle--a bottle of beer. Salazar was cited too, as a minor being in possession of an alcoholic beverage. She admitted she had been drinking.

“How much is this going to cost?” Salazar asked one of the officers while giggling.

Salazar, who said she was from “the Westminster-Huntington Beach area” said the two of them would not let the police citations ruin their evening.

“We’re still going to party,” she said. “That’s what we came for.”

The officers told the couple they had no choice but to stop them because they saw Teskel throw a beer bottle into the back of the pickup truck he was driving.

“We’re not here to give anyone a hard time,” one of the officers said later. “We’re just trying to keep things under control.”