Laguna’s Link to Festival Tourists: It’s Love and Hate

In his short 16 years of life, Adam Donner has acquired the Laguna Beach native’s proper two-part attitude toward summer tourists.

No. 1: “They sure don’t know how to drive.” And No. 2: “They bring a lot of money to the city.”

Donner knows. This summer, the high school student has watched hundreds of thousands of tourists clog Laguna Canyon Road, Coast Highway and particularly the intersection of Forest Avenue and Glenneyre Street. He also pocketed $750 from his summer job as a parking attendant for the Festival of Arts--one of the four art festivals in Laguna Beach that ended their annual eight-week run Sunday.

Closing their doors were the arts and crafts shows--Sawdust Festival, Art-a-Fair, Starfair and the Festival of Arts. The latter includes the famous Pageant of the Masters, which features paintings brought to life with local actors and actresses portraying the figures.

For many artists and townsfolk, the closing of the festivals marks the beginning of the end of their yearly love-hate summer romance with the tourists.

Tourists. Not only do they jam the only three entrances into town, they also bring along with their money what locals regard as diminished senses of humor, fashion and politesse.

“So this is why they call it the Sawdust!” is a joke that ticket-takers at the sawdust-covered Sawdust Festival say they could do without.

Artists demonstrating their talents said they try to ignore the sarcastic “Where are the numbers?” comments they often hear. Some said they had to use paint thinner to clean off dollar bills that customers placed on wet oil pallets, and had to dig deeply into their reservoir of patience to deal with tourists who placed beer cans on works in progress.

It is no different in town, shopkeepers said.

“The festivals bring lots of people . . . all kinds of people,” Sharon Smrekar, assistant manager of From Laguna, a contemporary clothing store, said with a meaningful look. “See this coat? It costs $518,” she said, pulling out an alarmingly white and delicate-looking coat.

“The first day it was (on display), someone bumped up against it with an ice cream cone,” Smrekar said.

With the festivals over, “We go back to our regular customers who spend money,” said Bob Young, manager of The Foxes Trot, an imports store on Forest Avenue.

Too Much Traffic

Minibus driver Stephanie Gibson said she was glad the summer was over even though most tourists on her shuttle bus were happy and cheerful. Next summer, she’ll take another job--the traffic was too much, she said.

But traffic accidents this summer actually have decreased, according to Deputy Police Chief Jim Spreine, because of new crosswalk lights and warning signs.

The festivals are only partially responsible for increased traffic, Spreine said.

“Many thousands of people come to Laguna because it’s Laguna . . . because of the beautiful shops, art stores--and the beach itself. . . . “

And if the weather stays warm, he said, thousands more people still will come to the beach, even after Labor Day.

People on Parade

Summer tourists, however, bring special opportunities for people-watching, locals said. “The way they dress is fantastic,” said David Redford, 47, a real estate investor and Laguna resident.

Sunday, he had installed himself and his newspaper at the busy intersection of Forest and Glenneyre to take advantage of the last few days of really good people-watching.

Like others, he was looking forward to regaining his town, and the ability to find parking and get into a restaurant before 8:30 p.m.--the time summer diners have to leave to make the opening of the nightly Pageant of the Masters show.

Most realize the tourist problem has a silver lining--and its color is green.

Despite a sluggish season posted at other county summer attractions such as Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, the seaside summer art festivals reported healthy preliminary attendance and sales figures.

The Festival of Arts this year broke all records--”not in number of sales, but in amount of money,” said spokeswoman Sally Reeves, who said final figures would not be available until October.

“Some people are complaining about the economy, but they’re sure spending it here,” Reeves said.

At the Sawdust Festival, total attendance as of Aug. 21 was 222,022, up from 217,213 at the same time last year, a spokesman said. And as of Aug. 14, concessions had sold $285,363 in T-shirts, drinks and snacks, up from $259,419 last year.

“Our sales are up proportionately to attendance” said Sue Crause, public relations vice president of Art-a-Fair, which moved its location this year closer to the Festival of Arts.

The full impact of the festivals--including increased sales and services--on Laguna Beach has never been precisely determined, city finance director Dick Reese said.

“This question has been asked for the last 15 years. There’s no way we can come up with anything. If a festival moves out of town, we have no idea what the effect will be,” Reese said.

However, beyond the income to artists, the city has received $3,015,150.16 over the past 10 years as part of a lease negotiation based on sales, said the Festival’s Reeves. The festivals also sponsor separate art scholarships.

Local residents weren’t the only ones cheering the end of the summer festival season.

Sunday, Sawdust artists were preparing for a blow-out, end-of-summer party. “There will be a lot of hangovers tearing down the booths tomorrow,” printmaker Alida Van Gores predicted. The past two months, Van Gores said, she has worked 13 hours a day, four days a week at her painter’s booth, never sleeping more than five hours a night.

Marshmallow Man Incident

Summer’s-end exhaustion was blamed for an anonymous attempt Saturday night to make one artist’s five-foot replica of the Sta-Puft marshmallow man anatomically correct. It was restored to its genderless state before Sunday’s opening, security guards said.

The festivals will open again officially on Monday, July 3, 1989, and will run until Aug. 27.

An employee of Laguna Flower Co. on Forest Avenue took a philosophical attitude toward the festivals and the hordes of tourists they bring.

“It’s only three months and before you know it, it’s over,” said the florist, who would give his name only as Raymond. “I look at it this way. There are other things in life, you know?

“If I hated it, I’d move. So it can’t be that bad.”

LAGUNA’S STAKE IN ART FESTIVALS

The Festival of Arts, one of four festivals held annually in Laguna Beach, pays 13.5% of its gross ticket sales to the city for lease of the grounds on Laguna Canyon Road. Until last year, it paid 17.5%. Here are the dollar amounts received by the city the past 10 years:

1987: $358,733 1986: $393,169 1985: $368,231 1984: $327,490 1983: $288,247 1982: $283,755 1981: $254,295 1980: $212,681 1979: $197,666 1978: $198,100

The city also receives a percentage of the Festival’s Tivoli Terrace restaurant revenues and art sales, which totaled $24,690 in 1987.

The Festival also pays the city $3,000 each year for two police officers to help people cross the street in the hour after the pageant.

The four summer art festivals in Laguna Beach are:

* Art-a-Fair, a juried show of 180 artists with no residency requirements.

* Sawdust Festival, an arts and crafts show of 200 artists, who must live in coastal communities from Newport Beach to San Clemente and are picked mostly by lottery system.

* Festival of Arts, a juried show of 160 artists, with the same residency requirements and featuring the 56-year-old Pageant of the Masters, a re-creation of artworks using people as subjects.

* Starfair, an alternative New Age show of arts and crafts with a peace-and-harmony theme.

The Pageant of the Masters, in its living tableaux of paintings, uses during one summer season: 75 gallons of paint 50 sheets of foam 5 gallons of latex 85 feet of Velcro 500 feet of armature wire 50 pounds of hot glue 12,000 linear feet of lumber 600 yards of muslin 100 gallons of makeup

The Sawdust Festival, over the course of a summer, uses 660 cubic yards of sawdust provided by area lumber yards. Each morning, new sawdust is rolled in on wheelbarrows, scattered on the ground, sprayed and raked.