Tsunami Saturday Laguna Beach!

Well, the Orange County Tea Party Patriots had an event scheduled yesterday in Laguna Beach, but it was cancelled due to weather conditions and tsunami warnings. I left the Temecula rally a little after Noon hoping to catch the tail end of the Laguna rally. I texted my good friend Megan and got word the event had been cancelled. I thought I'd hang out a little bit anyway. Walking down the boardwalk, tourists check out the surf conditions at the main beach lifeguard station:

A closer look at the tower:

The conditions at about 1:30pm:

Walking back across PCH now, looking north. That's Laguna Canyon Road at the second intersection with the green light. It's normally bumper-to-bumper at this stretch on the weekends, especially in the summer. Not too many folks heading to the beach on this day. Notice the movie theater up the road at right? I'm heading over that way, to the Starbucks just before it:

But I checked out the newsstand first. Actually, I didn't need to buy anything, which is unusual for me. I can read the New York Times online, at least for now, and I wasn't in the market for fashion or gossip rags:

Okay, here's a quick couple of shots of the Laguna Cinemas. "The Hurt Locker" is playing (Jules Crittenden's got an interesting post up on that today, "The Ass-Kick Locker"):

"Alice in Wonderland" is playing at Midnight next Thursday. Cool:

Heading back over to the coffee shop, which was doing good business:

This is the Fingerhut Gallery, featuring a life-size Cat-in-the-Hat sculpture. Asking price was $150,000:

The place might use some of that cash to hire a landscaper -- that ivy foilage needs a trim!

The obligatory surfer-boutique-on-PCH photograph:

I said hello to Thomas, who was cruising the sidewalks for recyclables. Nice guy. He was kind enough to pose for a picture:

Here's the sculpture of Eiler Larsen (1890-1975), the Laguna Beach Greeter:

The plaque's a little hard to read, but there's more on Eiler at the Los Angeles Times:

Okay, heading back south (which is an incline here, next to the Laguna Hotel, along with the Miranda Galleries):

Okay, walking back to my car now. Here's the obligatory downtown Laguna Beach cottage residence photograph. A beautiful home:

Now this is the ultra-obligatory Laguna Beach enviro-Subaru-owner's-car-with-a-Barbara-Boxer-for-Senate-2010-bumper-sticker photograph. I was about to hop into my car and I noticed the Boxer-for-Senate sticker and said to myself: Yes! It doesn't get any better than this. Orange County is known as the heartland of California conservatism, but the Laguna artists' colony is a left-wing bastion in south county. Laguna, which includes a substantial gay community, voted overwhelmingly against Proposition 8 in 2008:

Okay, that's it for today ... more great blogging throughout the week -- so tell a friend!