Classic beach towns of Southern California - includes Laguna Beach, Newport-Balboa, Venice and Avalon

Sunset, March, 1990

"Having a wonderful time." Over the decades a few million postcards from Southern California's beach towns have delivered that message-testimonials to all the fun to be had. Many pretty towns loll on the Pacific Coast, but four of them were always special. In Laguna Beach, an easel was as important as a beach chair. Newport Beach colonists grafted tasteful rows of cottages onto a working waterfront. Venice drew trolley-riding day-trippers. And Avalon was capital of a Camelot floating a ferry ride away.

Today, the Annette Kellerman swimsuits of old have shrunk to neon French cuts; "By the Sea" echoes less often than boom-box rap; the towns have punched the clock and joined the working world, juxtaposing bungalows and business offices, stockbrokers and sunbathers. But you can still enjoy pleasures of the past-and find more fun than almost anywhere else. Carefully tony and innocently shabby, decked out in thousand-dollar sportswear and two-dollar sunglasses, purveying cracked crab and caramel corn, these towns are where Southern California's sandcastle vision of health and happiness is made real on streets named Windward and Zephyr, Ocean and Coast.

Uncrowded March is an especially good time to visit. You can beach-walk, shop, dine, and maybe even park your car. In the next eight pages are four of the region's best places.

LAGUNA BEACH

Our 2-mile walk leads you to art, views, and the most scenic basketball court in America

They wanted to paint en plein air-in the open air-like the French Impressionists and the Hudson River School painters who inspired them. Armed with degrees from Paris and New York, turn-of-the-century artists Frank Cuprien, William Griffith, Joseph Kleitsch, and many others took horses and buggies through Laguna Canyon to a remote stretch of the southern Orange County coast. Here the air could hardly be more open or more sunlit, more sweetly pungent with eucalyptus and salt spray. The artists built cottage studios, founded galleries, and painted the gently luminous land- and seascapes later grouped as The Plein Air School.

Today these paintings bring high prices. And Laguna Beach, the town the painters helped settle, bas more than kept its value, too. A tone of tasteful Bohemianism still lingers here-discernible not just in the galleries that line the Coast Highway, or the art festivals that draw the summer crowds, but in more surprising ways as well. Let other towns' teams battle as the Chargers or Pirates; here fans cheer the Laguna Beach High Artists.

In a county that has changed dramatically over the last decades, Laguna Beach fights hard to keep itself more or less the same: a place still worth setting up an easel for. Last year, thousands of town residents marched en masse to protest proposed development in Laguna Canyon, an ongoing controversy.

Our 2-mile walking tour shows you some choice art and a few of the vistas that inspired it.

To reach Laguna Beach, take State Highway 1 south from Newport Beach 10 miles or, from Interstate 405, take Laguna Canyon Road (State 133) 8 miles southwest. Once you hit town, parking's a nuisance: Laguna's 2-hour meters are the stroller's bane. Bring lots of quarters, or leave your car at your motel.

As for lodging, the city has the old Hotel Laguna and a number of newer, fancier motels: call the chamber of commerce at (714) 494-1018 for listings. You can bed-and-breakfast at the Carriage House (494-8945), Casa Laguna Inn (4942996), Eiler's (494-3004), and Hotel Firenze (497-2446).

In Laguna, "Refresh and Rest, Then Travel On"

Start at the hot pink Laguna Art Museum (1), Cliff Drive and N. Coast Highway. The permanent collection centers on California artists, including Plein Air painters. On exhibit this month is Colors and Impressions: The Early Work of E. Charlton Fortune, along with selections from the permanent collection. Hours are 11 to 5 Tuesdays through Sundays. Admission is $2; 494-6531.

A few steps south, the ocean views from Heisler Park (2) found their way to many an early-century canvas; painters, amateur and professional, still daub here today. Paths wind among bird of paradise; steps descend to the tidepools of the Glenn E. Vedder Marine Ecological Reserve. Stroll northwest past the lawn bowling grounds (bowlers play most days), then return.

You can picnic in the park, or try any of three restaurants near the museum. Las Brisas, 361 Cliff Drive, offers Mexican brunches and dinners and the postcard-perfect setting you want on a first date; 497-5434. At 308 N. Coast Highway stands The Cottage Restaurant, a 1917 Japanese-influenced bungalow with breakfast, brunch, and dinner daily; 494-3023. Or rev up with coffee and pastries at the 242 Cafe, 242 N. Coast Highway; 494-2444.

From Las Brisas, take the path down to Main Beach (3) and the most scenic basketball court in America. Pick-up games are hotly competitive here as is the beach volleyball. In fact, only the swing set doesn't seem to attract semipros.

Across from Main Beach, the intersection of Coast Highway and Forest Avenue was for years the kingdom of Laguna's beloved Eiler Nelson, who greeted residents and visitors with a hearty wave. He's gone now, but his likeness endures in a statue at Greeter's Corner restaurant (329 S. Coast Highway), his welcoming spirit in the wooden gate on the north side of the street: "This Gate Hangs Well, and Hinders None, Refresh and Rest, Then Travel On."