Their Love for Laguna Hasn’t Budged

Laguna Beach is Orange County’s cultural melting pot. Old money mingles with the nouveau riche. Gays and lesbians are influential in civic life. There are artists, celebrities, tree huggers and one-time followers of hippie icon Timothy Leary.

They have little in common, except this: Come rain, mud, wildfires, landslides -- and in Laguna they all come, regularly -- few would live anywhere else.

“It’s just a friendly village,” said Steve Hopkins, 61, a real estate developer who lives in the hills overlooking Emerald Bay. “Saturday mornings, you go downtown and see people you know -- and some people you probably don’t want to know. There are authors and there are degenerates. It’s an eclectic bunch.”

In October 1993, when a massive fire swept through Laguna Beach destroying more than 400 homes, the flames burned nearly to Hopkins’ front door.

“I never thought about moving anywhere else,” he said.

No wonder. Laguna Beach is the heart of the California Riviera with steep hills that soar out of the sea. Craftsman bungalows and beach cottages mix with gated mansions and boxy contemporary homes on lots surrounded by eucalyptus trees, chaparral and coastal sage scrub.

The town is known for its rocky coves and pocket beaches, rugged headlands and surf spots that ignite when solid swells come out of the south. People also move here for the isolation. With only two ways in and out -- Laguna Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway -- Laguna Beach is an island attached to a metropolis.

Above all, the atmosphere in Laguna is laid back: Despite all the money here, swimsuits and shorts are the great equalizers.

Artists discovered the place starting in the early 1900s, drawn by the picturesque landscape and quality of light. Hippies moved in during the 1960s. Gays followed them in the 1970s. Since then, the city has attracted more wealthy residents intent on capturing the California Dream.

Each new batch of residents fell in love with Laguna’s beauty -- and learned to respect its predisposition for natural disaster. In many ways, the potential for havoc has worked to bring these diverse groups together.

“It was the one and only place I wanted to live,” said Bill LaPointe, 65, owner of the Orange County and Long Beach Blade, a newspaper aimed at gays. “It was one of the most picturesque places I’d ever seen.”

LaPointe moved to Laguna in 1971 after graduating from USC. Since then, he has dodged several floods and fires. On his 40th birthday, a hillside slid into his swimming pool and office.

LaPointe estimates he has spent more than $200,000 to repair flood damage, re-compact hills and install pumps in his basement.

Still, he stays. And last week’s landslide, which destroyed, damaged or imperiled 48 homes, was in many ways just another bump.

“I’m in love with the area,” LaPointe said. “There are beautiful birds and wild animals and a forest around me. I have a great degree of privacy. I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d like to live.”

Like LaPointe, artist Ken Auster isn’t moving either. He has been evacuated from his home and studio in Laguna Canyon several times because of natural disasters. The closest call came during the 1993 fire when a eucalyptus tree exploded in flames in front of his house.

“Like I told a friend, after an event like the landslide, you always think a little about it,” Auster said. “But after a couple glasses of wine and watching the sunset, you really don’t care.”

Auster, 55, is an Impressionist painter who started with surf art and has moved on to more serious subjects. He moved to Laguna Beach in 1972. The town, he believes, maintains much of the feel it had in the ‘60s and ‘70s when it was roughly half the size it is now.

“A majority in this town are not trying to keep up with the Joneses. They don’t move here to impress,” Auster said. “They have the world niched out and are happy to walk to the beach.”

That said, the place is so popular that the median home price today is nearly $1.6 million.

Laguna has remained, by Orange County standards at least, a bastion of liberalism. About half of the county’s registered voters are Republican; in Laguna, it’s less than 40%, although no party holds a majority.

Laguna is more white than the county as a whole -- 92% versus 65%. It’s older -- the median age is 43, while countywide it’s 33. And, no surprise here perhaps, Laguna Beach is also richer: Nearly 40% of households make $100,000 or more a year, according to the 2000 census.

Ann Christoph, an environmental activist and landscape architect who moved to Laguna in 1971, said she was drawn by its beauty and small-town feel. She soon fit in with the growing environmental movement.

“You feel enveloped by the community,” Christoph said. “You just feel you could call somebody whenever you needed something.”

Over the years, Christoph has worked for Laguna Greenbelt Inc., which was instrumental in stopping development in large sections of Laguna Canyon. She also has served on the City Council and Planning Commission.

During the 1993 fire, Christoph, then mayor pro tem, drove to Top of the World Park and saw homes burning and flames moving toward downtown.

When then-Gov. Pete Wilson visited the smoldering wreckage, he blamed the disaster on Laguna’s love of untamed -- and combustible -- landscapes and accused city leaders of poor planning.

“It was horrible,” Christoph said. “People had gotten the impression we weren’t doing anything and didn’t care.”

Although the city manager, the assistant city manager and a councilman had lost homes, angry residents descended on City Hall in protest.

Christoph lost her seat in the next election.

“What do you do?” she said. “You just try to let people know what happened and you move on.”

Laguna moved on but has lost much of its grass-roots environmental spirit that made it unique in a county that has traditionally embraced development, some longtime residents say.

In 1989, when the Irvine Co. won approval to build tract homes, a shopping center and a golf course in the surrounding canyons, thousands protested and blocked the project. The company eventually relented, selling the land to the city, which declared it protected open space.

Today, many say city leaders are cozying up to developers too much. Critics point to the lavish Montage Resort & Spa, which opened in 2002, and the proliferation of hillside mansions that dwarf Laguna’s older housing stock as changes that haven’t been good for the community.

Among them is Peter Paul Ott, 65, who lives on Canyon Acres Drive off Laguna Canyon Road north of town.

Canyon Acres is a peaceful wedge of land less than a mile northeast of downtown, which bustles with art galleries and pricey boutiques. The sound is of birds, not traffic. The homes are small and rustic and appeal to people like Ott.

Ott is old-school Laguna Beach -- meaning he’s not rich. His parents bought his property for $7,000 in 1944. With an income as small as his, Ott jokes that he has “no business living in Laguna Beach.”

Leary, who founded the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, rented a small house about 200 feet from Ott’s property. It was there that Laguna police arrested Leary on drug charges in 1968.

Ott, an artist, lecturer and keeper of an exotic collection of reptiles and birds, has confronted Mother Nature repeatedly in the canyon.

His wood-frame house was one of about 20 on his street that survived the 1993 fire; 40 other homes didn’t. When it rains heavily, it’s nearly impossible to cross the street, and a few years ago his girlfriend’s car was carried down the road in a river of mud. He is now preparing for this year’s fire season, clearing brush behind his property to make a fire break.

“My threat is minimal compared to a lot of places” in Laguna, Ott said. “A lot of it is experience. You have to know the ropes to live in a place like this.”

Times staff writers Sara Lin, William Lobdell and Claire Luna contributed to this report.

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By the numbers

Population: 23,727

Median age: 43.4

Population 18 and older: 84%

Race breakdown:

White 92%

All others 8%

Median household income: $75,808

Households with $100,000 or more annual income: 37%

Residents 25 and older with at least a bachelor’s degree: 56%

Housing units: 12,862

Housing units built before 1940: 48.5%

Source: U.S. Census

Los Angeles Times

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Natural beauty, natural disasters

Residents of Laguna Beach regularly risk natural disasters in a city dominated by hillsides, canyons and wildlands. Some of the major incidents:

1) Wildfire, Oct. 27, 1993

Area: North Laguna Beach to Irvine

Toll: 6 injured, no deaths

Affected: 16,864 acres

Homes/buildings: About 440 destroyed

Damage: $528 million

Suspected cause: Arson

2) Floods/mudslide, Feb. 23, 1998

Toll: 2 killed in mudslides in Big Bend and Canyon Acres areas,

9 injured

Homes: About 300 damaged or destroyed

Damage: $11 million

Cause: Heavy winter rains

3) Landslide, Oct. 2, 1978

Toll: 1 injury, no deaths

Homes: About 24 destroyed

Slide area: 5 acres in Bluebird Canyon

Evacuated: 200 people

Suspected cause: Heavy winter rains

Damage: $15 million

4) Landslide, Wednesday

Toll: 4 injuries, no deaths

Homes: 48 damaged or destroyed

Slide area: In Bluebird Canyon; acreage not available

Evacuated: 350 homes

Damage: Estimated in tens of millions of dollars

Suspected cause: Heavy winter rains

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Sources: Laguna Beach, State Sen. John Campbell (R-Irvine), news reports. Researched by LOIS HOOKER

Los Angeles Times