Laguna Beach's Forest Avenue Promenade: A Tragedy In Progress

Laguna Beach Promenade: A Tragic Tale Of 4 Dumb Monkeys

Suicide is often referred to as a long-term, permanent solution to a short-term problem.

The Promenade as championed by OUR 4 monkeys (Kempf, Whalen, Orgill & Rounaghi) has become that long term, lasting solution, way beyond its original temporary fix, band-aid intent several years ago.

There WAS a short-term problem, i.e., getting people out of crowded rooms that were “spreader events” regarding Covid. Open air, widely distanced dining with a prevailing onshore wind which accelerated through the constricted air spaces between buildings, contagions effectively dispersed hence threat reduced.

Yes, HELP the few businesses for a year or 2, but not ENABLE them to basically become permanent occupants, squatters in OUR version of Main Street USA (Forest Avenue).

Shouldn’t all of the businesses now being allowed to encroach have to individually amend their Conditional Use Permits, the entitlements and restrictions that travel with the property?

If not, why not, on what legal basis can the City take public right of ways in a blanket, umbrella fashion?

The City has in essence illegally transferred, expropriated OUR ownership rights without a valid beneficial public purpose or by voter acquiescence. Who in their right natural mind believes those 4 have OUR best interests at heart?

As an enviro-analyst, I always ask: “Where’s the mitigation?” This enormous swath, this swarm of multiple takings and significant adverse impacts had no independent CEQA study, did it?

Suing and screwing one’s own city might seem over-reach, but isn’t that what the City has done to us? The Promenade is an "unmitigated disaster," emphasis on the unmitigated.

As in no mitigations offered for the various permanent environmental impacts. Mitigations under CEQA should be apprised as compensation---where’s that in the City planning or dispositive process?

Shouldn’t it have been a foregone conclusion, at minimum go through a CEQA Initial Study Checklist review?

Today, it’s more like a “Promo-nada,” a way to promote a select few businesses with “nada” (nothing) for 95% of year-round residents like me.

WE weren’t rewarded, WE have been and apparently will be punished indefinitely for not aborting the idea at launch. A fraudulent, duplicitous canard heist pulled in plain sight; an illegal, unlawful temporary-turned-permanent taking of public space without a vote by residents.

What about the non-food or alcohol serving businesses, they’re not receiving compensation for their travails, are they? Their customer base must park further away, has no choice other than to leave town, shop elsewhere.

Where once upon a time (2019) drivers could let out or pick up their passengers on Forest who wanted to shop or browse, where is that accommodation, that compensation or mitigation taking place?

It doesn’t “add” to the way I’ve experienced Laguna since passing through as a child back in the early 50’s, nor add to my subsequent encounters, my previous 52 years here since 1972. This is massive disruption and dislocation achieved by aristocratic elitists.

The “Promo-nada” detracts and it’s an example of what happens when governance turns dictatorial and ceases to listen to the will of the people..

Every time I go downtown at random hours, there’re few if any people in those cattle corrals. Obviously (DUH) during inclement weather, from say midnight to 6 am 7/365 it’s 100% barren of bodies. It is and will always be a self-limiting fiasco.

It therefore serves no round the clock or year-round purpose or function, eliminates a historical cut-through passage street to avoid the backup at PCH & Broadway.

The Forest Promo-nada usage isn’t even maximized, it’s about "PRO-moting," about ponce (pretentious and affectatious) people who think themselves kool, wannabes yearning to be “seen on the scene.”

Celebritards all: As if their mere presence in OUR midst equals some kind of hip-happening blessing. Royalty slumming. Hollywood poseurs and pretenders.

WE, the people (residents in general) didn’t acquire any benefit. Formerly, WE went downtown from the am into early afternoon, WE were able to visit local businesses as they opened or casually socialize.

WE got the hell out before surrendering the late pm featuring tourists rolling in, taking over. WE grumbled but vacated.

Mind you, that was for only 3 months/year, some increase from Thanksgiving to New Year’s holidays, maybe Easter Week, but the rest of the year WE had OUR town, local businesses adjusted quite well or folded, just like any natural environs.

An ebb and flow, feast or famine economy. It’s called capitalism, it’s competitive, that’s how it works folks. Nothing was really broken that needed this type of peacock-strutting, self-righteous fixing.

The City illegally, illegitimately by fiat or decree took OUR parking spaces, didn't replace them, stole OUR sense of community but found THEIR workaround.

The City purloined OUR Main Street USA feel with the quaint banners across Forest for local events, that long block of Laguna’s essence, its “time and place” character away from us. Identity theft.

Why didn’t a group like Village Laguna file against the City for an “unlawful taking?" What’s to stop them or a coalition of NGOs to do so now? Nothing, just the will.

It was and remains grand theft by its very definition, Forest Avenue OUR public domain, OUR public easement, OUR property held in trust, in common. Artifice doesn’t equal intimacy, just the opposite is true.

Those most in support of it are the phoniest, most out-of-touch in OUR community. Billy Fried Brain and his ilk, monetizing carpetbaggers believing US a commodity not an existent viable, self-respecting community.

Why didn’t VL or an ad hoc of community organizations file post haste in OC Superior Court and name the Coastal Commission as a party?

It’s not too late, watch how soon the CCC rescinds, what’s wrong with at least trying to “Save Forest Avenue” or “Free Our Forest” from a booze-friendly, resident-hostile Council?

Grand theft of Property (Cal Penal Code §487) involves violations over $950 in value. Not just downtown but along PCH encroachments into public right-of-way turf abound.

Sidewalks, once sacrosanct for easy pedestrian circulation, aren’t OURS anymore. By the same methodology, enabled by OUR imbecilic City Council, sidewalks now belong to the businesses controlling them, impeded passageways that once were declared public easements. All are in rampant, flagrant violation.

Any journeyman real estate or enviro-attorney in one of the Resident’s First extended family could file and plead that case, it’s neither expensive or rocket science.

Start a PAC, create a war chest of funds for legal representation and hold rallies. For the long slog put City Council under siege: Meeting after meeting after meeting, akin to Chinese Water Torture, bombard public comments which are mass broadcast with OUR bodies in open, raucous and outraged rebellion.

Include lots of hoopla including media saturation for maximizing the public pillory crater, issue a series of press releases with updates, file as a CEQA challenge that should include the following checklist items: Land Use/Planning; Noise; Air Quality; Transportation/Traffic; Aesthetics; Mandatory Findings Of Significance (Cumulative Impacts).

Then an OC Superior Court judge can decide, not OUR traitorous City Council.

For a few hundred $$$ to file, hasn’t THAT dynamic been on the table since inception years ago?

Nearly 100 parking spaces in proximity to OUR preferred destinations unavailable, without offered compensation for damages to OUR quality of life and OUR property rights.

That’s a legally viable type of tort, damage has occurred, it’s a taking lacking any form of mitigation. Qui bono? (who profited and continues to profit?), certainly not the majority of the residents?

What’s there now is ersatz, a manufactured sense of community like Disneyland. That there are stubborn holdouts is typical: These are people who aren’t in touch with OUR reality, OUR history.

Forest is no longer genuine or authentically US….unless of course a person feels that herding the gullible and glamorous into a compressed environs for a few hours late afternoon or early evening, basically an URBAN habitat, is one’s idea of bliss.

Conquerors always try to eradicate the vestiges of a former culture—which is what’s happened. With Krazy Klown Kween Kempf or Mumbling Bob The Clueless, their main purpose as propped up and funded by commerce is to continue the entropy, full speed ahead.

Unaddressed, they’ll secure entitlements formally disbarred or enjoined. This Council as composed is stealing the streets and sidewalks, common land that should entitle US to the right of free, unrestricted mobility.

They’re swiftly making OUR past obsolete, their vision has no such nostalgia or historical, heritage sentiment.

Newer isn’t axiomatically better, only to those consumer society types, inclined towards disposing of culture as one does of carry out containers tossed into the trash.

They allege that WE fear change? Sophistry personified, and yes, we’re horrified! No, WE don’t need your changes, but that isn’t fear. It’s knowing what WE want, definitely not shiny new toys or gimmicks..

The Promo-nada is not only a form of visual blight. It’s an insult to the majority of residents plus the overwhelming majority of non-alcohol or food serving businesses on Forest and Ocean. Public testimony and petitions sustain that claim.

And who believes that those indulging in alcohol won’t have other substances in their bodies? With marijuana and now even psychotropics available, ever heard of the synergistic, amplified effects? Ask our LBPD, LBFD, EMT personnel or Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

Where’re the cost or risk benefit analyses as they get in their vehicles and drive OUR local streets or major arteries? If WE do purchase Laguna Canyon Road, how much indemnification will WE need to carry for related accidents?

Can PCH or Laguna Canyon Road get any more hazardous, more dangerous? LCAD has expanded tremendously there, and a clear, designated bike path is being considered if WE control the 133. Bikes & pedestrians as bowling pins, how quaint is that?

Or what about revelers who stumble into the OTHER, non-alcohol sales merchants stores? Why should they be sacrifices to the hubris and greed of the "booze and grub" commerce constituents?

Great models for the young too, indulging those who can’t remain sober while in OUR public commons, huh? “Mommy, what happened to the old Laguna, you know, where kids felt safer?”

Parking and traffic circulation are critical elements of any CEQA review. By eliminating Forest as a vehicular venue, the “queuing” (backing up Glenneyre) has increased.

More cars are also “bulging” into adjacent streets like the 3rd Street hill. This cascading effect ends up putting more of a burden on the OUR streets that feed into Park Avenue too. Including LB High School, Thurston and TOW mornings and afternoons.

More smog in the central business district bowl from idling vehicles, more honking by irate, frustrated drivers in a hurry, historical traffic circulation patterns eradicated, and to benefit a handful of business owners who don’t even live here, now do they? Ever see a survey about THAT ownership?

This is antithetical, a disincentive to encouraging locals to venture downtown and shop locally…what was once upon a time ephemeral, grid lock is now systemic.

Looked at ecologically, what was once foraging habitat for indigenous species (year round residents) is gone. Extirpated, all in the name of a minority.

If the civic groups which allege that they represent OUR core values won’t stand up to these 4 monkeys, openly defy and resist their crypto-fascism, then the fight to “Save Planet Laguna” was over before it ever even started.