Laguna Niguel’s ‘Moon-Fest’ Has Become City’s Cheeky Tradition

Who says staid, conservative, let’s-please-follow-the-rules Orange County doesn’t have a sense of humor?

It seems almost surreal, but there’s a spot in South County where you can live on a $5-million equestrian estate, buy a new Mercedes-Benz and drop your drawers in front of a passing Amtrak without the slightest bit of condemnation from your friends or the authorities. Fact. Welcome to the neighborhood, pal.

On the second Saturday in July, Laguna Niguel becomes a place where buttoned-down becomes bottoms up. Near the spot where two-lane Camino Capistrano Road comes to a dead end, several thousand folks show up outside a roadside saloon to, well, moon the passing Amtrak trains.

Legend has it that this bizarre and bawdy ritual began as a dare by Mugs Away tavern regular K.T. Smith some 24 years ago. While celebrating his 30th birthday at his favorite watering hole, a somewhat-worse-for-wear Smith offered to buy beers all day long for anyone who would show his or her backside to a passing Amtrak. Smith had five takers. The next year, 50 regulars celebrated Smith’s birthday, displaying their cabooses to the passing trains.

This year, the R-rated event attracted more than 3,000 people to this colorful dive that sits only 40 yards from the railroad tracks.

Paul Smith, whose saloon name is “Cowboy Paul,” has been attending and occasionally participating in the “Mooning of the Amtrak” for six years.

“I thought it was a great time the first year I did it,” said Smith, 46. “It reminded me of college.”

Jim Peterson, a former bar owner in New Orleans who goes by “Big Jim,” said the annual block party is an “incredible idea.”

“I wish I’d have thought of it when I had my bar,” said Peterson as he sipped a cocktail at the end of the wooden bar. “It’s a great marketing ploy.”

But it’s one that saloon owner John Kunik jokingly tries to distance himself from.

“I don’t promote, condone or endorse what goes on,” said Kunik, a former telephone company executive who purchased the watering hole seven years ago. “However, I am open that day.”

Of course, Kunik doesn’t mind that the annual drawer-drop has appeared on local and national television, including CNN and the Travel Channel.

“San Juan Capistrano is known for the return of the swallows,” he said. “Laguna Niguel is famous for the return of the mooners.”

As the event has grown up and become more publicized, it has evolved into something of a “Moon-Fest.” The mooners fall somewhere between Deadheads, Parrotheads and football tailgaters. They begin arriving at sunrise in their RVs, motorcycles and pickups. Some regulars have even begun outfitting the back of their pickups with hot tubs.

A giant train schedule is posted outside the bar for those wishing to stumble across the street and position themselves against a chain-link fence for the next passing train. The lineup of bare bums, Kunik says, can vary in age from 1 month to 80 years.

The passenger trains run all day from north and south, about twice an hour beginning at 7:30 a.m. and ending at 11:40 p.m. A Web site (www.moonamtrak.org) offers mooners directions, a list of do’s and don’ts, pictures from previous years and train schedules for those who want to view the “moon show” from a train window.

Outside the bar, vendors sell event T-shirts and a painter marks the behind of those mooners who want Amtrak passengers to have something to remember them by. Live bands play inside the tavern, which is your typical dive. Peanut shells litter the dusty wood floors. Old license plates, beer posters and faded pictures of Mugs Away legends clutter the walls. Motorcycles and surfboards hang from the ceiling.

Construction workers, bikers, painters, schoolteachers, doctors and lawyers gather after work to discuss the hot topics of the day.

“It’s kind of a quiet men’s club in here,” said Smith, who had 15 Mugs’ locals visit him in the hospital after a major surgery. “People get a lot of good advice here.”

They also know how to have a good time. Golf outings, fishing trips and charity events bring this collection of barflies together. But what sets them apart is the annual moon festival.

Not all the regulars take part or even attend the spectacle, but most accept its premise.

What does Amtrak think of all this openness?

“It has absolutely nothing to do with us,” Amtrak spokeswoman Sarah Swain said. “It’s a tradition, but it’s not one of our traditions.”

And City Hall?

“From our perspective,” Laguna Niguel City Manager Tim Casey said, “we prefer to turn the other cheek.”

Casey has never attended the festivities, though Kunik said many other politicians do. But even before Casey arrived in town from Redondo Beach, he learned of the event’s importance.

“When I got the job, I received a congratulations card from city staff and the council members,” he said. “Instead of signing it, someone had drawn bottoms in different shapes and sizes with first names of council and staff. Once I understood the significance of the card, I realized I was joining a City Council and a city staff with a great sense of humor. And that was important.”

Occasionally, Casey said the city receives a nasty e-mail or phone call from someone wishing that the Orange County’s Sheriff’s Department would crack down on the mooners.

“I think, generally, the Sheriff’s Department views this as a harmless tradition,” Casey said. “I’m sure they have more important things to tend to.”

Cowboy Paul said that the Sheriff’s Department decided four years ago that it was going to get tough on the mooners.

“They showed up with video cameras and they were going to get people for indecent exposure,” he said. “But that was the year a bunch of porters from the train began mooning back at us. I think the cops just said, ‘If they don’t care, we don’t either.’ ”