A Place to Get Away

Like its counterpart in New York City, Huntington Beach’s Central Park offers an expansive oasis for residents, with offerings some might find unexpected in the middle of dense civilization.

Within its 350 acres, Huntington Central Park ([714] 960-8847; open 5 a.m.-10 p.m.) features an equestrian center with room for 400 horses, a campground for youth groups, a rustic 200-seat amphitheater available for weddings and other activities, and an 18-hole Frisbee golf course, in which the targets are metal baskets, not holes in the ground.

For those wishing to flee farther from the hubbub, the Shipley Nature Center has a self-guided half-mile walk through forests, grasslands and a freshwater marsh, all inhabited by birds and other wildlife.

The park, bordered on the east and west by Edwards and Gothard streets, with Goldenwest running north and south through its center, and on the north and south by Slater and Ellis avenues, is also home to Huntington Beach’s Central Library, which boasts a 320-seat playhouse.

The jewels of the park are its lakes, Huntington on the western side and Talbert on the eastern, which sometimes dries out to form a meadow.

Overlooking Huntington Lake is Alice’s Breakfast in the Park (off Central Park Drive, [714] 848-0690), where for 20 years Alice Gustafson and her family have been serving breakfast and lunch, selling baked goods and offering feed for the geese and ducks for $1 a bag.

“It’s a wonderful location,” said Gustafson, 69. “We have this great lake out here. We like to say that we’re unique--we’re hard to find, but we’re worth it.”

Gustafson and her late husband, John, also operated the End Cafe--a landmark restaurant at the end of the Huntington Beach Pier--that is, until massive storms demolished it in 1983 and again in 1988. A thick scrapbook inside Alice’s commemorates the eatery that was lost at sea, and patrons can peruse it while biting into thick cinnamon rolls or homemade bread, which Alice’s daughter, Mary Beth, bakes daily. The cookies and brownies usually sell out quickly.

The breads serve as foundations for thick, sticky creations such as the Monte Cristo sandwich (turkey, ham and cheese deep-fried in French toast and dusted with powdered sugar, $5.25) and the Eggs Benedict ($6.95)--items your stomach may love but your cardiologist won’t.

The walls are covered with country craft decorations--ceramic pigs, stuffed dolls, woven willow branches, framed jigsaw puzzles, a section of white picket fence and even wallpaper that features a chicken-wire design.

The distinctive decor reaches the bathroom as well, where the floor is papered with old covers of McCall’s, Family Circle, Country Home and other magazines and the walls are covered with cute signs--”If you’re smoking in here, you better be on fire.”

There are also letters from Gustafson hectoring patrons who took pictures home for themselves, and a square drawn on the wall, like a police body outline, with “And yet another one!!” written inside.

“I did get one thing back, though, with a little note saying, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ I thought that was really nice,” Gustafson said.

Customers have come from as far as Sweden and Great Britain--Gustafson’s not sure how they heard about the place--but her multiple generations of regular, local customers are the ones who flock to the quaint cafe, no matter what.

“The people that come, they just rave about the food and the service and the atmosphere. It can be real foggy out and it can be crowded,” Gustafson said.

Like a mirror image, on the opposite side of Goldenwest and perched on Talbert Lake, is Central Park’s other eatery, the Park Bench Cafe (17732 Goldenwest St., [714] 842-0775). Like Alice’s, it serves breakfast and lunch daily and is open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays, until 3 p.m. weekends.

After strolling among the park foliage, visitors can stop next door and get some to take home at the Armstrong Garden Centers (17552 Goldenwest St., [714] 843-6347, open 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily and opening at 8 a.m. Saturdays).

“People will go through the park and just come over here and walk the grounds and just sort of enjoy the serenity, especially on the weekends,” said manager Ted Moldenhauer.

Right now, the store is making its transition from holiday greenery to roses and fruit trees. Now is the ideal time to start planting them, he said. In roses alone, Armstrong has 128 varieties in stock, with as many as 1,000 more that can be ordered.

Along with their vivid colors, they flaunt names such as ‘Iceberg,’ ‘Plum Crazy’ and ‘Sultry’ or celebrity names such as the pinkish-purple ‘Barbra Streisand’ and not surprisingly ‘Rosie O’Donnell’ and ‘John F. Kennedy,’ the son of a Rose.

“There’s such an amazing variety of colors, of flower shape, petal count and, of course, aroma,” Moldenhauer said. “And roses symbolize romance. It’s a way of getting back to nature that people may be getting away from in a suburban lifestyle.”

To go with their new gardens, customers can find statues of frogs, mermaids and any variation of St. Francis, as well as chicken-wire topiary frames in the shape of birds, bunnies, bears and--appropriate for Surf City--a 3-foot-tall surfer.

“We get all kinds of people in here, but our typical customer is somebody who likes gardening and does it part time,” rather than an expert green thumb, Moldenhauer said. And sometimes customers who have wandered over from Central Park decide they need their own slice of nature to nurture.

“This is kind of a unique location. Even though it’s grown up a lot around us, you get the feeling of being in a little oasis,” Moldenhauer said.

“It brings out something people are lacking in the rest of their lives,” he said. “They can take a little bit of that home and keep a little bit of nature with them.”

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IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE: If you go: From the San Diego Freeway, take Goldenwest Street exit and head south. From Pacific Coast Highway, head north on Goldenwest.

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Central Park

1. Huntington Central Park

Goldenwest Street and Slater Avenue

2. Alice’s Breakfast in the Park

off Edwards Street inside the park

(714) 848-0690

3. Armstrong Garden Centers

17552 Goldenwest St.

(714) 843-6347