Myths and mendacity
A few new local myths are being floated by the usual suspects. The logic and purported facts behind the myths are so absurd they are embarrassing.
Let’s examine some, but let’s start with one number: six million. That is the supposed number of annual tourists descending upon Laguna (according to Laguna tourist authorities from a few years ago, not yet updated), and the resulting hordes clog up the place.
Parking structures attract tourists. For example, here is the current argument for not having any new parking structures: they attract the hordes. That’s right, the tourists don’t come for the beaches; they come because parking structures make them do it. As in, “Hey honey, let’s drive down from Irvine to Laguna to visit a parking structure there because, ahh, we don’t have enough in Irvine to visit.”
This is so absurd it is laughable.
Local restaurants attract the hordes. One intrepid writer (to this paper) stated, “The best data we can find from an independent consultant study [which he admitted was cooked up by he and a friend] suggests that perhaps 70% or more of the total annual revenue of our bars and restaurants comes from non-residents.”
Ahhh…right. There aren’t enough good restaurants in Irvine, Newport, Tustin, South Coast Plaza, or Spectrum, so Irvine residents drive 25 minutes to Laguna, have dinner and a few drinks (hey, it’s a night out!), and drive 25 minutes back home (please believe me, Mr. Policeman, I haven’t been drinking) all because our fabulous restaurants make them.
The intrepid writer even proposes that to compensate, our restaurants should pay a premium tax of 3%….as though their already paper-thin margins could be, well, you know, surreptitiously increased by an add-on tax at the bottom of the bill, like a “resort fee.” (And yes, the intrepid writer does recommend that).
Again, it is nonsense. The numbers are nonsense. The logic is nonsense. Their proposal means the proponents know squat about the restaurant business.
The downtown promenade is bad for business. This is the biggest canard of all. The Promenade is the best thing to happen in Laguna for years. It attracts visitors from local resorts and Laguna residents from their hills above…and they eat there, shop there, and invite friends there. And once there, they buy stuff. Plenty of stuff. Even the long-time workers at Bushard’s will tell you their biz is up.
Councilmember George Weiss, the current frontman for the people who think these things, proposes eliminating the Promenade. In his pronouncements, he tries to fake you out by stating he merely wishes for the Promenade to exist on weekends, but not weekdays, meaning the facilities would become simplified steel structures to withstand their twice-weekly transport. This means they—and the street scene, at best will be mediocre, and probably ugly, so these people can claim the whole thing is horrible —”told you so” —and once they obtain three votes in the city council, the Promenade will be gone.
And once again the south lane on PCH at Forest will be backed up (forever) by someone waiting for a fronting Forest parking space to be cleared by a car already parked there. Yeah, let’s have that.
And all of this, all the above, is being driven by a small group seeking to preserve what? Certainly not the out-of-this-world unbelievably cool Laguna of the 1960s and 70s and Timothy Leary living near Canyon Acres—no, all that, just like the Boom Boom Room, has been outlawed by those same people, who think they know better.
So, what do they want instead of that unbelievably cool and real, old Laguna—a rotting business district? Cause that’s what they’re getting.
Michael Ray is a Co-Founder of The Discovery Cube; the O.C. School of the Arts; Sage Hill School; Art Spaces—Irvine; the Great Park Conservancy, and many others. He is a semi-retired principal of Sanderson-J. Ray Corp.
