When you grow up along the sparkling Southern California coastline, one of the most difficult things you can do is attempt to solicit sympathy from anyone in the world. Beautiful beaches, moderate temperatures, amazing quality of life, and a pretty chill attitude across the board, all make everyone in every other part of the world think you’d never have a care. For some, it is a life of economically based privilege, but for most, it is a life of hard work that yields worthwhile rewards.
But, when you grow up in the beautiful little coastal towns of Southern California, one of the most-desired places to live in the world, one of the saddest things you witness year after year is the eventual and permanent transformation of those towns into a place that is unrecognizable from the one you loved so dearly while growing up.
Towns grow, landscapes change, small businesses close and city governments change from focusing on maintaining an enjoyable life for citizens to attracting more tax revenue and tourism dollars.
Local, long-time residents are pushed out as they seek to re-find the quaint little towns that have been pulled out from underneath their feet by the passage of time. Streets and neighborhoods are transformed from sleepy, cozy, little burgs with character to bustling, big box, trendy cities with urban flair. And sadly, avoiding busy areas filled with tourists grows from a summertime chore to a year-round endeavor.
But perhaps the worst aspect for those who grew up in this paradise is watching these beloved towns commit cultural suicide. You see quaint downtown streets lined with small houses and mom-and-pop shops where locals congregate turned into multi-story urban apartment complexes with underground parking garages and first-floor brand name retail outlets. Cultural uniqueness and flavor is slowly and methodically replaced by uniformed, trendy urbania.
So, if it’s not the residents who want this change, then why is town after town falling victim to this urban sprawl? It is a two-pronged attack from the government-industrial complex. City governments that need to bring in more revenue to support a growing population and urban developers who want to make the most profit from increasingly valuable coastal land are joining forces, and there is no doubt that, willingly or not, they are destroying the character of Southern California’s coastal towns.
I call it cultural suicide because residents of the community that serve in local government or own or work for the development companies are committing the act of destroying these cities from within. Whether knowingly or not, these people are killing the culture and character of the communities that surround them.
The suicide starts with one or two local businesses, spreads down the street, begins to consume entire neighborhoods, and then, eventually spreads throughout the entire town. Local governments seeking more revenue raise the rents on government properties, forcing the local businesses that occupy those government properties to shut their doors or move. Increased rents on government property lead to increased rent on private property, and the local businesses that occupy those private properties shut their doors or move. The government land is sold to make even more revenue and the private buildings are gutted and torn down, then replaced with bigger, more sterile buildings with less culture but more space that can be rented at a higher cost to larger corporations that can afford the higher rents. This urban sprawl spreads like an incurable virus until its host no longer resembles its former self.
I recently read a fantastically written article from a locally focused online news and interest rag called Thrillist that really drove this point home. The article was about a well-known restaurant at the Santa Monica Airport that was forced out of business by the City of Santa Monica as part of that local government’s efforts to close the iconic general aviation airport and its businesses. The forced closing of the airport and its businesses, like this restaurant, will deal a definitive blow to the local culture and long-time patrons of these businesses as the city guns to fill up its coffers with the inevitable millions it will gain by selling the land on which the airport sits to developers who will no doubt sweep in and build yet another array of those multi-story earth-toned, wood and metal accented, five-story apartment buildings with underground garages and first-floor name brand retailers that I mentioned earlier.
And much like the Los Angeles of old that we only see in movies, old photographs, and our dreams, the airport that has served local aviators from Hollywood stars to the most anonymous among us, will soon be just a memory. The restaurant, called Typhoon, had a single owner, a local businessman who spent a good portion of his life serving amazing cuisine, supporting the local jazz scene, and providing a place that pilots around the world will still talk about for years now that it’s gone. Why did is this restaurateur call it quits, even while his establishment flourished? The City of Santa Monica raised his rent by 200% because they wanted him, his long-time patrons, and the culture and flavor of the Santa Monica of yesteryear gone. To them, it is a small price to pay to keep the city government afloat.
The city needs money and urban developers are chomping at the bit to get that airport land, and sadly, in Southern California these days, that is all that matters to city government and urban developers. Local culture, flavor, long-time residents, long-time family businesses, and the heart and soul of the communities can all be damned!
And this is just one establishment inside one historic Southern California coastal town and iconic location. This is just one of many thousands of places that are, or soon will be, long gone, never to return.
One such other iconic feature of these costal towns that is changing forever is the pierside main street that once housed local mom-and-pop restaurants and a slew of boutique specialty and surf shops. And nowhere has Main Street and its surrounding area gone through a more gut-wrenching overhaul than in Huntington Beach, or Surf City as it is called in the onslaught of tourism marketing materials.
Those of us who grew up in Huntington Beach from the 50s to the 80s enjoyed a colorful and diverse row of one-story shops and restaurants that lined a quiet little street that was overly busy only a few select hours a week and during the peak of summer traffic. We enjoyed small mom-and-pop shops and a quiet local scene of local surfers and beachgoers. But then, the big construction cranes and land developers came in and the Main Street and surrounding area that we knew and loved was changed forever. Today, the quaint little pierside area we loved is gone, replaced by multi-story condos, brand name retail chains, and sprawling hotel complexes.
Locals once spent lazy weekend mornings beachside having breakfast and enjoying early dinners. Now, if you’re a local resident, there is a good tourist-filled four or five months in which you don’t even bother trying to get down there, if you even bother trying at all. For those of us who grew up in the area and spent a good chunk of our childhood there, it is so sad to no longer be able to enjoy the places you love because they are either so crowded, or worse, just gone.
Locals who have had enough can do little but move on to quieter areas or quieter towns and hope that the government-industrial complex will not overrun their new home just as quickly. And this pattern is going to continue to spread and grow. Trendy urbanites will rush in and the long-time residents who built our coastal towns with years of hard work will rush out, heading north, south, or inland, attempting to recapture their quaint little towns somewhere else.
For now, we watch the mom-and-pop shops come down, and watch the ever-taller, ever more sprawling hotels, retail centers, and apartment and condo complexes go up, remembering a time when our towns belonged to us, the folks that built them.
Photo by William L. Savastano
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