Street fights, bros 'n' hos, toxic surf, free-flowing hooch, corrupt politicians–whatever gave Nicole Santa Cruz the idea that Huntington Beach is the Jersey Shore of Orange County?
Cruz foists that premise in a Los Angeles Times story about Surf Shitty's boisterous bar scene.
MTV is no doubt Mapquesting H.B. for a reality camera crew now.
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Cruz's evidence for making the Huntington Beach-Jersey Shore connection came after a late-night weekend ride-along with local cops. Among what she saw:
- The air is crisp and salty, and despite the cold, women in colorful tube
dresses are laughing and men in collared shirts are whistling in
appreciation.
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A 24-year-old man stumbling on the brick sidewalk while answering a cop's question about how much he drank that night: “A Mind Eraser. Two shots of Jack Daniels. A Guinness and a Pabst Blue
Ribbon. Two Irish Car Bombs, then three Bud Lights.”
- On a typical night, Baja Sharkeez is packed with people who look like they were born in the '80s.
- Tales from bartenders who say they have tossed naked men and broken up bloody fights.
- The term cops give drunks who frequently wander into the wrong house, looking for a place to sleep: a “Downtown 459,” after the state penal code for burglary because alarmed residents think someone broke in to steal from them.
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The final tally from enforcement within the three-block downtown while Cruz was hanging out with cops: broke up two brawls, encountered a man
passed out in the front seat of a cab, arrested a 21-year-old who
voluntarily jumped off a 20-foot building and ushered numerous
drunks home.
The Times decided to parachute in a reporter because of Huntington Beach's No. 1 ranking among cities its size in California in victims killed and injured in
alcohol-involved traffic accidents. A 22-month police investigation zeroed-in on that stretch of Main Street as causing the most alcohol-related calls.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.