Great Drives and Destinations: A Californian Beach Called Newport

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

Talk about a two-sided coin! Welcome to Newport Beach, California -- as wealthy and aristocratic as its namesake Newport, Rhode Island, and as funky and homespun as what used to be Coney Island. You get both here: the people who have it all and love it all, and others who have so little and may well be more content.

Indeed this is a town where some sit comfortably in the Balboa Bay Club & Resort below the painting of the late John Wayne, one of its members and former club president, and look about contentedly. Life is good. And others in town find their solace riding a bicycle down a country lane with a doggy buddy in a basket. Life is good.

John Wayne made this as much his home as Hollywood. The county airport is named after him where an 8 and a half foot statue celebrates his memory. His boat, The Wild Goose, a converted minesweeper still brings tourists to the part of town that is more used to the glitterati who sail.

Life took its time getting to Newport Beach. Things started happening around 1825 when the Santa Ana River flooded and changed its run to the sea. The flooding created large sandbanks and a new bay and slowly a few intrepid souls moved in. According to historians Rick Adams and Louise McCorkle “at this time Newport Beach was only a string of shacks on a sandy beach in front of a mudflat called Newport Bay.” What was a fishing village of a mere 300 people gradually grew as entrepreneurs built docks and brought rail transportation to town. It’s the same old names of money making money: James Irvine I with his extensive land holdings and Henry Huntington with his far-reaching trains. Huntington brought the red trolleys of his Pacific Electric Railway in 1904 as far down as this New Port between San Pedro and San Diego and hungry passengers arriving by train could buy fresh fish on the beach from the Dory Fishing Fleet that had been established as far back as 1891.

The Dory Fleet is the last of its kind in the United States: In small boats two men row ten miles out to sea each dawn to harvest the trawl lines they have set the day before in an approach to commercial fishing unchanged in 120 years. The fishermen still drag their boats up the beach on rollers. Their boats become their fish counters and the public still lines up to buy. The Fleet website has some great fish recipes. In this disparity of lifestyles that is Newport Beach a life-size wooden rendering of a dory fisherman is mounted by the pier a three minute drive from the dealership for Ferrari, Maserati and Tesla, the exciting Silicon Valley electric car.

The Pacific Coast Highway runs through town and drivers heading south surely must notice some attractive places but, before they quite know it, they’ve left Newport Beach behind. That’s a pity. Someone should have suggested they glance at a map to understand the town’s layout and perhaps drive over to the Balboa Peninsula. This is where you find blue-collar Balboa as the fun beach place to walk around in and explore. You can take the three-car ferry from the peninsula to Balboa Island. And maybe have a coffee or a soda to go with a terrific grilled fish sandwich before you sail over because restaurants and goods to buy are more expensive on the island.

The cafes and restaurants are brightly colored in most beach areas but the artist colonies of Laguna Beach are quite close and have helped make the whole area bustle and sparkle. On Balboa Island we are intrigued by the art when we have lunch at an Italian restaurant called, what else? “Ciao” and chat to its owner Tony Rainone. “The artist is Victor Ostrovsky, a Russian Jew who was born in Canada. You never see his subjects’ eyes. He says they have something to hide,” says Rainone.

Ostrovsky is a former Israeli naval officer. He apparently has been a Mossad agent so maybe he does have stuff to hide himself! The restaurant isn’t hiding its great menu, however, because when we had lunch the calzones wrapped in homemade pizza dough and the raspberry salads are flying out the kitchen and people are actually smiling as they eat.

Home owners smile here also. The houses are beautiful on Balboa Island. Small boats and motor yachts bob at harbor, many are tied down beside the homes. You might feel you were on Los Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, Florida but many of the homes look more like those on Cape Cod. Maybe that’s why those having lunch in “Ciao” are smiling: they’re locals living in Wonderland. Certainly the streets of Balboa Island are charming and the homes stunning.

We walk past the fire station and stop to chat with Fire Captain Rick Jaccaro.

“It’s a big responsibility protecting those lovely homes,” we say.

“Yes,” he replies, “But this is a great place to work and for a lot of nice people.”

“”Like the people in Los Angeles?”

He winces. “We once sent a strike team of five engines to LA to help put out fires that had been set in a riot. They shot one of our engineers!”

We change our topic of conversation and bend over the antique 1920 American LaFrance Type 75 fire engine that occupies pride of place in the fire station. The company in Elmira, New York, built a mere 25 automobiles but was famous for its solid and fast 6-cylinder fire trucks. It’s an Old World truck and in some ways this part of California seems Old World too.

A couple of miles north up the hill and inland rises an area far from Old World: the glitzy shopping mall, swanky Fashion Island. Of course it isn’t an island just a huge expanse where shoppers reign and the dollar is king. All you could possibly want is here including the grand hotel that’s the castle on the island: the Island Hotel. The hotel is centrally located for the beaches, for Disney and for points farther south. This not a beach resort, its interior landscaping with lush vegetation is more Hawaiian. It’s an urban hotel that’s about half business and half leisure. It’s a spa, a restaurant and a place right beside great shopping. It’s a getaway. And it’s a great place to watch the sunset over the Pacific from your bedroom at the end of a busy day.

We invite a waiter in the hotel’s restaurant to tell us why the hotel is special: “We are the Hamptons of the West Coast,” he says proudly figuring we know about those special places on Long Island. “This part of Newport Beach has seen the same people coming to visit for years. We have many low-key celebrities here. Many of our guests know each other. It’s a bit like Mayberry on TV!”

We grin at him and say, “That’s a bit of a stretch. This is a very tony place.” He smiles back. He wants to say something so we ask “Is that why your hotel is special, because you have celebrities here?”

 “Absolutely not” he hastens to say. “We are special because of our staff. We have been trained and we agree with our GM who has said to us: “Do you care about problems that guests may sometimes have – and would you want to help them solve them?”

Our GM knows our answer, “That’s why we are here!”