Aliso Beach 2

Posted on October 8, 2002 in Photos

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The damnable thing about eyesores is that sometimes they can be so damned photogenic.

Aliso Beach is what Crystal Cove might have become if the State of California had not bought the bluff top land and so forced the developments to the other side of the Coast Highway. The pillage of the Orange Coast by developers led, in 1976, to the passage of the California Coastal Initiative and the creation of a commission that would check the destruction of the tidelands. The quiet abolition of the same commission in the eighties led to the resumed despoiling of and blockage of access to long stretches of our wild coast.

I do not doubt that the flying saucers, cubes, and castles dracula that I depict in this installment have won architectural awards. Judges of these consider only lines and angles: the ocean and the beach are nothing more than something to be framed; the wind and the rain only things to take shelter from; the chaparral a a clutch of weeds to be replaced with green aliens from more romantic shores.

I hope in this, you will see as I do the ugliness of these crates as well as giggle at other follies which are undertaken when people set foot on a beach.