Drive Nice

Clever columnist Christine Fugate wrote recently in the INDY about the deterioraton of people's driving in town. It's impossible not to agree. Just yesterday I observed a driver who interrupted her cell phone conversation long enough to yell out her car window at a man walking his bicycle across Coast Highway in a crosswalk. She obviously didn't see him and was angry that she had to stop to let him cross. Who could blame her -- he must have slowed her down by at least 5 seconds!

At the next stop sign you come to, take a deep breath, come to full stop, count to three like they taught you in Driver's ed (even though the car behind you will honk) and be a nice driver. I could go on but surely I can't say it better than Christine. In case you missed it, here's her recent column:

RULES OF THE ROAD

“What are you doing?” I sat in my car yelling. “Don’t you know the law?”

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” my oldest daughter asked confused as to why I was waving my arm frantically at the windshield.

“That car barely stopped and then just followed the car in front of her.” I explained. “This is not follow the leader,” I yelled out my window at the white Toyota but it sped on by. I cursed myself for coming to the worst intersection in Laguna, Glenneyre and Thalia, in the late afternoon when all bad drivers are unleashed.

Ever since I moved from Los Angeles to Laguna Beach, my husband and I have been appalled at drivers here. First of all, there appears to be no law when it comes to four way stops. Now, I am terrified to cross the intersection on my turn, afraid that someone will come barreling through when they feel like it. I like to sit patiently and wave everyone ahead of me. Sometimes, I’ll meet another driver like myself. We will wave back and forth a few times and eventually, one of us will go.

Don’t even get me started on merging. What happened to the every-other-car rule? Or the courtesy of allowing a car to merge in front of you? Gone.

The sad thing is that my own driving skills have dulled and faded. When I lived in Los Angeles, I considered myself a professional driver, well versed on merge acceleration rates, intersection law and driver etiquette. Now, I seemed to have joined the pack that believes, ‘When I think it’s my turn, I will go.’

I know we like to blame all the bad traffic on the tourists, but are they also to blame for our bad driving skills? Does the summer time traffic make us feel so territorial that we abandon all recognition of the law and do what we think is best? Have courtesy and etiquette evaporated because ‘we’re going to show those tourists whose boss of this town’? A wild west mentality seems to have taken over the roadways—the person with the biggest horse or fastest mule wins right of way.

Which is why on this Memorial Day weekend, I think it is a perfect time for us locals to review the laws of driving. Perhaps by doing so, we can set a better example for the tourists and not allow our local backstreet intersections like Glenneyre and Thalia turn into lawless zones.

I have singled out my own pet peeve, The Four Way Stop, to review. I know it can be confusing, but I am going to attempt to lay it in out in a way we can all understand and follow:

STOP
This first part requires no discernment. Come to a complete stop at the stop sign.
If you arrive at the intersection and it is a happy day, no one is there and you proceed across.

FIRST COME, FIRST GO
If there are other cars there, you proceed in the order in which the cars arrived. That means that if you arrived second, you do not go first. You patiently wait your turn. If the car directly across from you is crossing, you do not cross too, unless it is your turn.

POINT TO THE RIGHT
If you arrive at the intersection at exactly the same time as another car or the intersection is crowded and it is hard to tell who arrived first, the law switches to the ‘vehicle on your right’ rule. This means that the person on your right goes before you, and the person on their right goes before them. If the intersection is full, then the flow of traffic becomes counter-clockwise.

We all need to get off our cell phones and pay attention to these simple rules of the road. If you feel that you may not be able to tell who arrived first or figure out which way is right, engage your kids to help you. I recently tried it and I felt rather smug about the fact that I was not only driving better, but also teaching my kids more than how to express road rage in our sleepy little beach town.

Bill!

If Barack Obama's visit to Newport Coast on June 12 quickens The Lagunan's pulse, a defibrillator might be in order for the visitor on Sunday the 24th. Former President Bill Clinton is coming to the Coast for an event supporting his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Now, it's not so much about the man's charisma, nor his enormous capacity for information, but the thing about the guy is that he could be out on the links, enjoying private life -- but that's not who he is. No, Bill's been criss-crossing continents, using his status as a world figure to draw attention and money to the most urgent of the world's needs. The Clinton Global Initiative addresses poverty, energy, climate change, world health, and education. As a result of his longstanding friendship with Nelson Mandela, he's made Africa a central component of his post-presidential work; the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative focuses on helping developing countries treat and care for those with the virus or the disease.

All great reasons to admire Bill -- but this visit is clearly about the lady he's married to and the race that could very well bring him back to the White House. One can't help but muse on a presidency with this kind of two-for-one brainpower. Here are the details if you're inclined to drop in and say hello:

7:30 pm to 8:30 pm - Cocktail Reception
$750 per person/$1,250 per couple
8:30 pm to 10:00 pm - Dinner
$2,300 per person (includes photo)
$4,600 Maximum Contribution - Honored Guest

The home of Ellie and Alex Razmjoo
Address provided upon RSVP

RSVP to Melahat Rafiei at melahat@ocdemocrats.org or 949-350-7733 as soon as possible. Space is limited.

Art Outside the Bubble

Here's a really fun way to spend a Saturday with fellow diehard art lovers:
Laguna Art Museum's Contemporary Collectors Council takes field trips to places you might not get to on your own -- including exclusive peeks at private collections and talks with artists.

The next CCC trip is on Saturday, June 16. The group will visit Art Center College of Design in Pasadena to see its "Architecture and Technology for Intelligent Living" series of films on futuristic housing, then tour the hillside sculpture garden there. During lunch in Pasadena (included in the price of the day's event) you can chat with the colorful individuals in the group... and then there's a visit to the restored home of Nelbert Chouinard, founder of The Chouinard School of Art. The CCC will tour the home of artist David Tourje and visit with other artists involved in the Chouinard Foundation.

You get extra credit for reducing your carbon footprint because you take a luxury bus instead of driving. (Embrace it! Another upside of mass transit is that you get to drink wine on the way home!) Before you know it, you're back in Laguna by 5:30, having digested a LOT of culture and learned something new about art, all in a single day. Wanna go, or find out about future trips? Get in touch with Johanna Felder at 949-497-4525.

Just Say No to Nurdles!

Chip McDermott kept seeing trash on the streets and beaches of Laguna, and it pissed him off.

Rather than grouse and blame it all on the tourists, he decided to take matters into his own hands and he became a one-man force against garbage. He founded Zero Trash Laguna, to make it easier for people to responsibly dispose of their garbage and recyclables by placing more trash cans around town and to make people pay attention to the way we treat our town, its beaches and water.

Chip and several environmental groups have banded together in a campaign against Styrofoam. If you look at a cup closely, you see it is plastic particles pressed together. Those little white bits, called nurdles, don't ever break down into anything biodegradable. Sea animals mistake them for food and eat them, and this form of plastic is slowly making its way into the mollecular makeup of sea life. Please remember this next time you use a Strofoam cup...and don't. Ditto those obnoxious packing peanuts that scatter like confetti on trash day and go straight into the storm drains. (Hate to make trouble, but has anyone approached places like the Mail Stop, The UPS Store, etc. to ask them about their plans to go green?)

This issue was on the Laguna Beach City Council agenda last Tuesday, and the council agreed to look into creating a new ordinance banning the use of non-recyclable food containers, i.e. Styrofoam. We live at the beach, this stuff inevitably ends up in it, let's take steps to stop it. Makes sense to me. If you want to add your voice to this issue, get in touch with any of the supporting organizations: Earth Resources Foundation, Laguna Greenbelt, Surfrider Foundation, Laguna Ocean Foundation, Pacific Marine Mammal Center, and the Laguna Canyon Conservancy.

Here's a little background on the potential ordinance that Chip sent me:

After a three-year attempt to create a voluntary program, it was determined that the large grocery chains and chain fast food entities would not participate. These businesses are the major source of most of the accumulation of these insidious materials in the near shore marine environment and our wild lands. A Styrofoam cup with hot coffee maybe has a useful life of twenty minutes in your hand and can persist and accumulate in the marine environment for 200 years!

Following similar bans in the Cities of San Clemente, Santa Monica, Malibu, Emeryville, Oakland, San Francisco, Portland, the countries of Ireland, Australia (the Southern State), Austria, Switzerland, and other political entities, the time has come for the City of Laguna Beach to address the important environmental issues associated with throwaway containers composed of long-lived materials, i.e., some plastics and polystyrene.

It is not the intent of this proposal to create any undue hardship on any local business. Functional, cost-competitive, environmentally sensitive, substitute products exist and are readily available. Now is the time to implement a cure for the plastic plague. Begin by taking responsibility for what you consume and demand eco-sensitive food containers from restaurants and businesses.

Your support of this important issue will be appreciated. Please call, write, or email your City Councilpersons (contact information shown on page 2 of local newspapers) and let them know you support Laguna Beach getting control over the distribution of these toxic compounds.

How to post on THE LAGUNAN

Come on in! The blog is all warmed up and ready for you! If you have an item you'd like to submit for consideration here on THE LAGUNAN, just send it as an e-mail to mcmurray@mac.com.

What are you involved in that you'd like your neighbors to know about? Got an idea for how to help the environment, make life as a parent, citizen, friend, neighbor better? Write it up and send it! It doesn't need to be perfect -- I can fix it up if you send it, but do try to write as if you're writing to a friend; make it first-person and include your first name and any contact info necessary for people to respond to your post, if appropriate. Photos welcome, the more unique the better. No dull boring yawnfest-inducing press releases, no promoting your undoubtedly wonderful business unless there's a charitable angle, and please no snarking. Just stuff that makes Laguna and its people a more interesting, community-spirited, heart-centered place to live.

Hope Comes to Town (well, to Newport Coast anyway)

While The Lagunan is not endorsing any particular candidate, she admits to a quickening of the pulse at the words "Obama in Orange County." The audacity of hope in the face of the meltdown that is the GOP at the moment creates an excitement and enthusiasm that I daresay no one under age 50 has witnessed in their lifetime. Keiko Sakamoto and Bill Witte are two of the Lagunans behind this breakfast fundraiser on June 11 (thanks, K&B!).


If you have a spare $1,000, you can come see for yourself what all the buzz is about. Senator Barack will rock the gateds and the unwashed paying masses at a private home in Newport Coast on Monday, June 11 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Requested contributions to attend this undeniably memorable event range from $25,000 (good for a photo with him, I'll bet) down to a mere $1,000 (perhaps a handshake, no pushing!). Required RSVP cutoff is June 6; contact Melahat Rafei at 350-7733.

Home of the Blues: "Come Hell and High Water" at BC Space Gallery

The beauty of N'awlins before Hurricane Katrina, the frightening events during it, and the unimaginable aftermath are documented in COME HELL AND HIGH WATER at BC Space Gallery, May 17 - July 7, 2007.

The extraordinary artwork of three New Orleans-based artists give new meaning to its tagline, "Home of the Blues." Photographers Jackson Hill, Brian Gauvin, and Thomas Neff were there to record it all. As a town with its own share of natural catastrophes -- although certainly not of this scale -- Lagunans can relate, and I hope they come to this show.

Jackson Hill is a professional photographer and educator whose studio is located on the streetcar line in downtown New Orleans. From this vantage, his "Night Nature" series captures the romantic vision of the New Orleans nightscape as it was before Katrina changed everything. Brian Gauvin is also a working photographer and exhibiting artist in New Orleans who was on the scene in the critical periods immediately after the storm struck. His insightful images capture the ensuing chaos and often bizarre physical juxtapositions created by Katrina. Thomas Neff' is a professor at the School of Art, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, who participated in the ensuing search and rescue missions where he recorded his compassionate photographs and personal narratives of the survivors of the storm.

The collective impact of the work by these three artists is a compelling portrayal of the cataclysmic effects Hurricane Katrina has had on the lives and landscapes in the Big Easy.

Abnormal gallery hours are 2-5 PM, Tuesday through Friday, with other hours easily arranged by contacting the gallery in advance. BC Space Gallery is located at 235 Forest Avenue, Laguna Beach, 92651. For additional information you may call (949) 497-1880 or email bcspace@mol.net. You may also visit our website at www.bcspace.com.