Spot the Non-Tourist in Tourist Village

When you live in a tourist town, it’s easy to get snotty about the tourism that keeps the place alive. On one hand, a city like Laguna Beach would be better to live in without hundreds of thousands of tourists passing through each year; on the other hand, the dollars these folks blow help keep the town going--as a place for tourism, that is.

Most locals profess to hate tourists. Jokes about entrance and exit fees for visitors ($5 each way), armed protection (“Man, if I just had a 50-caliber air-cooled on the hood of my car”) or the tried-and-true bumper sticker that reads “Tourists go home, but leave your daughters” are pretty much commonplace when the weather turns pleasant.

It should be noted that the same people who might promote machine guns on their vehicles or the abandonment of tourist daughters are almost always not serious about these ideas--they’re the same people who will patiently explain to a mystified visitor how to find the beach (easy) or where the public restrooms are (hard), or why the uniformed woman with the citation pad is writing down the plate numbers of their rented Dodge.

A recent Sunday looked like a perfect tourist day. The weather was superb, spring had arrived and Saturday had a busy throb that promised even greater numbers for the next day. Due partly to a weak imagination and partly to the idea that it might be better to join what you can’t beat, I decided to become a tourist in my own town.

My destination was Laguna Village, a collection of little shops and galleries on the beach side of Coast Highway about a block south of the Hotel Laguna. There is a place to eat, with plastic chairs and tables overlooking the water. In a lot of ways it’s the quintessential Laguna tourist spot--a combination of arts, eats, atmosphere and cultivated eccentricity--exactly the kind of place locals avoid. If Eiler Larson had a memorial tomb, this would be the spot for it.

My friend and I arrived at Laguna Village about 2 p.m. Lunch was the first order of the day, so we joined a line of about 30 people waiting to be seated at a table with an ocean view. The line didn’t seem to be moving very fast. All of them appeared to be tourists, I noted with satisfaction. My patience was exhausted after 15 seconds of waiting, so we decided to order from the kitchen and find our own place to sit--plenty of benches, planters and non-cafe stools from which to choose.

On our way to the kitchen, we decided to stop at the bar. There is something exhilarating about getting a drink at an outdoor bar; it makes you feel free, empowered, at one with nature and favored by the gods.

I hadn’t known this bar was even here, and was quite happy to see the humble little outdoor cantina so reminiscent of those in Mexico. It even had the requisite television on a shelf above the mixers, though it was showing one of the Final Four semis rather than a “Starsky and Hutch” rerun. However, the $8.50 tab for two smallish drinks suggested Laguna Beach, not Zihuatanejo.

While waiting for our lunch order we discovered the fun in watching plate-laden waitresses crash into the scores of tourists who wandered the shops. There’s a collision or near-collision every minute or so.

Our food ready, we found stools overlooking the cafe that overlooks the ocean and cast smug glances toward the line that hadn’t moved. The Pacific was brown and not very inviting, I think due to winter storms and a recent red tide. A few surfers were out at St. Ann’s, but Main Beach was bereft of the usual Boogie-boarders, body-thrashers and swimmers you might expect to find on a such a warm day. The sun left rectangles of pink on our winter-white legs.

Lunch was surprisingly good. The little kitchen turns out a variety of food, from smoked salmon sandwiches to a Chinese dumpling plate, chili and burgers. I’d expected the parsimonious portions usually reserved for tourists but got a genuine adult-sized meal.

The real touring started after we ate.

We visited the shell booth. I came close to buying a shark’s jaw--about 18 inches across--but the $35 scared me off. I imagined it dangling from the outside wall of my house as a kind of greeting to visitors. There were shells from Haiti and shells from Indonesia. The kind proprietor said he’d give us a “combination deal” if we wanted more than one thing.

We said we’d think about it.

Then we visited the stand that sells ceramic toadstools in various colors, patterns and sizes. These have a funky, Alice-in-Wonderland-meets-Timothy-Leary kind of vibe and look pretty cool in a flowerpot or garden until the weeds grow over them or--in a season of generous rain--real toadstools grow in among them and you can’t tell if you’re looking at a $5.50 decorative ornament or the genuine spore-created article.

We said we’d think about it.

Next stop was the Native American booth, where a large man showed us something, he said, that few have ever seen: pictures of a white buffalo calf. The calf was born in 1994 and, according to the lore of certain tribes, is the harbinger of a new age of prosperity. He also showed us the bow and arrow sets and “dream catchers”--hoops with netting that, when hung near a bed, help the sleeper retain good dreams and forget bad ones. I was tempted to pick up a small dream catcher but actually enjoy remembering my bad dreams as much as the good ones, so I told the fellow I’d think about it.

Next we visited the artist Michael Lavery in his outdoor studio.

Michael is an acquaintance of mine. He was hard at work on a commission piece but took a few moments to explain his theories on ambidextrous tennis playing (Mike’s a tennis nut), and the way athletic training can help a painter by giving him a steady hand against the canvas. He told us about the fierce competition between local artists doing marine wildlife paintings and sculptures--whales and dolphins and the like. He gave my companion a greeting card with a shrunk-down version of one of his paintings on it--”Laguna Heat,” which Michael painted in 1987.

This, of course, shattered the illusion that I was a tourist. Michael’s generosity reminded me that I actually live here, have a history in this place and an investment in what goes on. We walked back down Coast Highway and, as I looked out to the thousands of cars carrying visitors in and out of town, I was pleased once again to call it home.